A feature, produced in a collaboration between The New York Times and The Marshall Project, about Harvard University’s eleventh-hour flip-flop on its acceptance of ex-convict Michelle Jones to its doctoral program in history. Jones, who spent more than two decades in prison for the murder of her four-year-old son, conceived non-consensually when she was 14, […]
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Posted inEssays & Criticism, Highlight, Nonfiction, Quotes
Florida, White Privilege, and Racism
My origin story—as a son, and later a father and a husband; as a citizen, a racist— has always begun in a crumpled car at the side of the highway. May 30, 1982.
Posted inNonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Jennifer Gonnerman, Evan Allen, Britni de la Cretaz, Jen Banbury, and Gordon Edgar.
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Story
The Age of Forever Crises
We need to learn how to talk about our irreversible mistakes. Historian Kate Brown says the first step is to resist the Chernobylization of knowledge.
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Story
How Diderot’s Encyclopedia Challenged the King
The encyclopedists’ plan to catalog knowledge seemed harmless enough. But what they intended was far more subversive: to restructure knowledge itself.
Posted inNonfiction
The 19th Century Lesbian Made for 21st Century Consumption
Jeanna Kadlec considers Anne Lister, the historical figure at the center of HBO’s Gentleman Jack, and the influence of other queer women who preceded her.
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Story
In the Age of the Psychonauts
Three psycho-spiritual “events” of the 1970s — involving Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, and Terence and Dennis McKenna — had a strange synchronicity.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
‘Craft Is My Belief System. My Obligation To Writing Is Religious.’
Nathan Englander talks about the “super-American world” of Orthodox Judaism, Philip Roth’s funeral, and training himself to write his new novel “kaddish.com” while daydreaming.
Posted inArts & Culture, Blog Post, Commentary, Culture
The Enduring Legacy of the Willie Lynch Hoax
Why Kanye referenced a nonexistent slave owner.
Posted inNonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Jessica Bruder, Garrett M. Graff, Suleika Jaouad, Gulnaz Saiyed, and Daniel Riley.
