Search Results for: Obama

Program Note: Welcoming Rolling Stone to the #Longreads Community

Program Note: Welcoming Rolling Stone to the #Longreads Community

Chris Jones: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010

Chris Jones is a writer at large for Esquire. (His stories are on many of your Top Fives.) He’s currently blogging at My Second Empire.


David Grann: The Mark of a Masterpiece, The New Yorker, July 12, 2010

Just a perfectly constructed, painful reveal of the sinister side of the art world, starting at its origins, with the artist’s fingerprints.

Michael Kruse: Stories of LeBron and sportswriter intertwined, tangled, The St. Petersburg Times, Nov. 21, 2010

Maybe the best way to approach an over-covered subject: write about him by writing about someone else. (See Breslin, Jimmy. Digging JFK Grave was His Honor.)

Eli Saslow: For a look outside the presidential bubble, Obama reads 10 personal letters a day, The Washington Post, March 31, 2010

For a look inside the presidential bubble, report the hell out of the story of a single letter.

CJ Chivers: A Firsthand Look at Firefights in Marja, The New York Times, April 19, 2010

Every time CJ Chivers heads off to war and sends back a story, I feel like less of a man and less of a writer.

Tom Junod: Eating the Whole Animal, from the Inside-Out, Esquire, April 2010

Pure entertainment by one of the all-time great magazine writers. Also contains the sentence: “The veins are what freaked me out.” Impossible to resist. Reading, not eating, that is.

It Was Rubio’s Tuesday: ‘The Most Important Freshman Senator’

Longreads Pick

Marco Rubio’s strategists were brutally direct in a memo to the candidate on July 10, 2009. “The hard truth is that no one outside of a small number of activists cares about you right now as a stand-alone candidate. And our 2nd quarter fundraising numbers will make many care even less.” The only plausible path to victory was for Rubio to become the Anti-Crist, and the most important point of contrast would be support for the Obama agenda.

Source: Weekly Standard
Published: Nov 6, 2010
Length: 21 minutes (5,446 words)

The Audacity of Nope

Longreads Pick

With his perma-tan, two-pack-a-day baritone, and natty wardrobe, House Republican leader John Boehner is a backslapping, deal-making throwback to the G.O.P.’s past. But his recent “Hell, no!” anti-Obama strategy, as he seeks to ride the Tea Party wave, may point to an ugly future.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Oct 26, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,220 words)

Overdrive: Who Really Rescued General Motors?

Longreads Pick

In February of 2009, Steven Rattner was selected by the Obama Administration to oversee the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler. It was not a popular choice. Rattner was a Wall Street financier with no expertise in the automobile business. But, as Rattner makes clear in “Overhaul,” his account of the experience, the critics misunderstood his role.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 25, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,200 words)

Interview: Bob Woodward

Longreads Pick

On his book, “Obama’s Wars.” “Biden says, ‘You’re gonna have to make some goddamn tough decisions, man’ Not ‘Mr. President,’ [Laughs.] but ‘man.'”

Source: Onion A.V. Club
Published: Oct 21, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,188 words)

The Man Who Never Was

Longreads Pick

Desperate to keep his Senate seat, John McCain repudiated his record, his principles, and even his maverick reputation, entrenching himself as the anti-Obama. Which raises the issue of whether the leader so many Americans admired — and so many journalists covered — ever truly existed.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Nov 1, 2010
Length: 22 minutes (5,657 words)

What’s Eating David Axelrod?

Longreads Pick

The disillusionment of Obama’s guru.

Published: Sep 27, 2010
Length: 21 minutes (5,415 words)

Covert Operations

Longreads Pick

The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.

Author: Jane Mayer
Source: The New Yorker
Published: Aug 30, 2010
Length: 39 minutes (9,962 words)

Washington, We Have a Problem

Longreads Pick

How broken is Washington? Beyond repair? A day in the life of the president reveals that Barack Obama’s job would be almost unrecognizable to most of his predecessors.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Sep 1, 2010
Length: 41 minutes (10,466 words)