You’ve heard from the Longreads’ editors, now it’s the turn of our readers.
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Highlighting stories from Evan Malmgren, Thea Lim, Beth Raymer, Kasey Butcher Santana, and Nico Madrigal-Yankowski.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Greg Tate, Alicia Inez Guzmán, Christian Wallace, Laura Hoffman, and Connie Wang.
Anatomy of Absolute Power
The people of Wilcox County, Alabama, remember a longtime sheriff as a god or a monster—it just depends on who you ask.
40 Days in a Jungle and Our Top 5
“The skies were blue that day, and there was a light wind. For around half an hour all was well. But as the Cessna approached Caquetá, a Colombian department that contains one of the densest, wettest, most remote corners of the Amazon, something went wrong.” Pat yourselves on the back: you’ve made it through January. […]
Our Most-Read Longreads Originals of 2023
The 10 top-performing essays published on Longreads this year.
Our Sister’s Netflix Hit and the Week’s Top 5
“But all was not well in the house on the corner of Lincoln Road and 52nd Street. It belonged to Dennis and Brenda Bowman, a married couple with two children. For the Bowmans, March 11 marked the last time they saw their 14-year-old daughter, Aundria, alive.” We’ve got some big news this week from our […]
The Enduring Joy of Maps (and the Week’s Top 5)
“Empty spaces on maps were so terrifying to ancient mapmakers that they filled them with decorations, fictional landscapes, and monsters. We moderns miss the beautiful monsters, but what if they never actually disappeared? What if the monsters were always part of the map, part of mapping itself?” After many months of hearing about how great […]
A Year in Reading: Backrooms, Backcountry, and Back Home
From two side of the world—these are the stories shining a light on the overlooked corners often holding the pieces together.
It’s So Sublime, and Our Top 5
“When I listened, I didn’t know if it was something I entered, or something that entered me. If it was within me or if it was me. Do you remember being 16 and loving a song? Of course you do. It felt like that. It felt like everything.” This week, we’re featuring “On (the) Sublime,” […]


