27 must-read stories on the making of the world’s greatest magazines.
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Longreads Member Pick: 'Quebrado,' by Jeff Sharlet
This week, we’re excited to share a Member Pick from Jeff Sharlet, a professor at Dartmouth and bestselling author of The Family, C Street, and Sweet Heaven When I Die. “Quebrado” is a chapter from Sweet Heaven, first published in Rolling Stone in 2008, about Brad Will, a young American journalist and activist. Read an excerpt here. Become a Longreads Member to […]
Longreads Guest Pick: Briana Bierschbach on 'Finding Molly: Drugs, Dancing, and Death'
Girl reporter for Politics in Minnesota. Mother of Dragons. It was a great week for longreads in America (see: Reuters’ ‘The Child Exchange’ investigation and Rolling Stone’s interactive story on hackers who will probably save the world), but one piece was passed around on my social media feeds more than any other: ‘Finding Molly: Drugs, […]
Video Pick: The Journey of Transgender Rocker Laura Jane Grace
If you’ve been following Longreads for a while, you may have seen this excellent Rolling Stone story from last year by Josh Eells, “The Secret Life of Transgender Rocker Tom Gabel”, about Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace’s transition. This MTV House of Style short reveals more about her life, and the small things she’s […]
The Letter
S.I. Newhouse’s contentious appointment of Robert Gottlieb as the editor of The New Yorker in 1987, and what Gottlieb did to bring the magazine into a new era: “Orlean was an early Gottlieb-era hire. ‘She came in off the street,’ said McGrath, her Talk of the Town editor (though, she noted, Gottlieb was often her […]
Inside Apple’s Plans for Its Futuristic, $5 Billion Headquarters
Steve Jobs had grand plans for Apple’s new headquarters, but now there are questions over whether the company should be going through with them: “Apple hasn’t announced any major changes to Jobs’s vision, so some of the sought-after $1 billion savings will likely come by rolling back his sky-high requirements for fit and finish. Rather […]
The Ghost in the Machine
(NSFW, not single-page) An in-depth profile of rap legend the D.O.C., who penned many of N.W.A.’s and Eazy-E’s early songs and became an on-again, off-again studio partner to Dr. Dre: “The shine finally started to trickle down. N.W.A’s first national tour opened in Nashville in the spring of 1989, with Doc doing eight minutes a […]
Longreads Member Exclusive: Baghdad Follies, by Janet Reitman
This week, we’re excited to feature Janet Reitman, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and the author of Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion. “Baghdad Follies” is Reitman’s 2004 story on what it was like to be a war correspondent in Iraq. As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the war, Reitman reflects on her […]
The Winners’ History of Rock and Roll, Part 3: Bon Jovi
Rethinking the legacy of one of the most ridiculed hair bands of our time: “I have no insight into the goings-on of Jon Bon Jovi’s headspace, but I like to imagine him having a ‘Once in a Lifetime’ moment during the Springsteen duet: ‘This is not my classic-rock staple, this is not my classic-rock backing […]
Longreads Member Exclusive: ‘Cormac McCarthy’s Apocalypse’
This week, we’re excited to feature a Longreads Exclusive from David Kushner (@DavidKushner), a contributing editor to Rolling Stone whose work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ and Wired. He’s been featured many times on Longreads, and he’s the author of Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto. “Cormac McCarthy’s Apocalypse” is Kushner’s 2007 […]
