Search Results for: Prison

A Basketball Carol

Longreads Pick

The Washington Generals always lose: to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. They lose on indoor basketball courts and outdoor courts. They lose on ships, they lose on aircraft carriers, they lose in prisons and they lose on the back of trucks. … This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come from the story I’m about to relate. If we were to believe that the Generals mostly lost to the Harlem Globetrotters, or almost always lost, or even won only as rarely as the Detroit Lions, then there would be nothing more remarkable about that day 40 years ago than a Lions upset victory over one of the unlucky three or four or five teams most years who happen to haplessly run into it.

Published: Jan 5, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,722 words)

Geoff Van Dyke: My Top 6 Longreads of 2010

Geoff Van Dyke is deputy editor of 5280 Magazine in Denver.

***

The Future of Advertising, by Danielle Sacks, Fast Company

A must-read for anyone in the media business.

Innocence Lost, by Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly

Instrumental in getting a Texas man off death row and out of prison.

Burger Queen, by Lauren Collins, The New Yorker

Deep, revealing profile of chef April Bloomfield.

The Jihadist Next Door, by Andrea Elliott, New York Times Magazine

What happens when an American is the face of the Islamist insurgency?

Hackers Gone Wild: The Fast Times & Hard Fall of the Green Hat Gang, by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, Rolling Stone

Sex, drugs, and hacking … it doesn’t get better than this.

What Good Is Wall Street, by John Cassidy, The New Yorker

How banks made trading, which has no social value according to Cassidy, their major source of revenue.

The Runaway Doctor

Longreads Pick

When luxury-loving Dr. Mark Weinberger vanished, in 2004, he left in his wake a wife saddled with more than $6 million in debts, a father headed for bankruptcy, and hundreds of patients who say he misdiagnosed them and performed completely unnecessary sinus surgeries. Now “TheNoseDoctor” of Merrillville, Indiana, is facing prison, along with more than 350 malpractice suits, after finally being captured while hiding out in a tent in the Italian Alps. The author investigates charges that a talented young physician became a greedy, mutilating mon

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Dec 22, 2010
Length: 33 minutes (8,477 words)

The Inequality That Matters

Longreads Pick

Another root cause of growing inequality is that the modern world, by so limiting our downside risk, makes extreme risk-taking all too comfortable and easy. More risk-taking will mean more inequality, sooner or later, because winners always emerge from risk-taking. Yet bankers who take bad risks (provided those risks are legal) simply do not end up with bad outcomes in any absolute sense. They still have millions in the bank, lots of human capital and plenty of social status. We’re not going to bring back torture, trial by ordeal or debtors’ prisons, nor should we. Yet the threat of impoverishment and disgrace no longer looms the way it once did, so we no longer can constrain excess financial risk-taking. It’s too soft and cushy a world.

Published: Dec 14, 2010
Length: 23 minutes (5,972 words)

From Kid Celebrity to Consummate Con Artist

From Kid Celebrity to Consummate Con Artist

From Kid Celebrity to Consummate Con Artist

Longreads Pick

When immigration officials greeted him at Pan American Hospital, he said he was a 13-year-old orphan from Colombia who sneaked into the Arca Airline plane’s wheel well. Name? “Guillermo Rosales.” That was the first lie. Now he has matured into one of the world’s notorious jewelry thieves, who has escaped prison and dizzied detectives in at least five countries using a slew of stolen identities: A budding doctor studying in Ireland. A Colombian diplomat’s son. An English family man. A New York priest. A German prince. A wealthy Bahraini.

Source: Miami Herald
Published: Dec 11, 2010
Length: 9 minutes (2,359 words)

Jared Keller: Top 5 Longreads of 2010

Jared Keller, in addition to being in charge of the whole internet, is also social media editor for The Atlantic.

michellelegro:

Trust in what Jared says. He’s in charge of, like, the whole internet. Or at least the portion of it housed in the Watergate building. 

jbkeller:

Dan Baum, “Happiness Is A Worn Gun” (Harpers, August 2010)
 
Many knee-jerk opponents of gun rights have never handled a gun before, so what happens when one liberal wears a concealed weapon? The Harpers articles is subscription only, but it’s worth subscribing just to read about Baum’s psychological transformation as a concealed gun owner.
 
Rebecca Mead, “Rage Machine” (The New Yorker, May 24, 2010)

I despise most everything about Andrew Breitbart – his personality, his politics, his smear tactics – but I loved this profile. Mead made him almost loveable.

Graeme Wood, “Prison Without Walls” (The Atlantic, September 2010)

This story has been done before, but I have an odd fascination with surveillance and surveillance states.

Robin Marantz Henig, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” (New York Times Magazine, August 18th, 2010)

Caught between economic recession and a poisonous political environment, why do young people take so long to grow up? For maximum impact, read “The Recessions Long Shadow” which appeared in the March 2010 issue of The Atlantic, immediately beforehand.

Wayne Curtis, “Gunpowder On The Rocks” (The Atlantic, November 2010)

A New Zealand bartender learns what pirates and sailors knew long ago: explosives and liquor mix just fine.

Bernie Madoff, Free at Last

Longreads Pick

In prison he doesn’t have to hide his lack of conscience. In fact, he’s a hero for it.

Published: Jun 6, 2010
Length: 19 minutes (4,954 words)

The Huckster

Longreads Pick

Need to pick a good prison? Alan Ellis can help. Attorney, author, and self-publicist, Ellis is the creator of a new legal niche—one that places him in the time-honored American tradition of the fast-talking salesman.

Published: Apr 1, 2010
Length: 11 minutes (2,761 words)

Death By Privatization

Longreads Pick

For Profit prison health care system implicated index of inmate.

Source: In These Times
Published: Dec 8, 2009
Length: 8 minutes (2,112 words)