A short list of books we loved (and featured) this year.
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Posted inStory
High Expectations: LSD, T.C. Boyle’s Women, and Me
“Outside Looking In” dramatizes the discovery of LSD and the cult of personality surrounding Timothy Leary. Our reviewer drops acid and thinks about how, for women, it can be safer to be a downer.
Posted inReading List
Longreads Best of 2018: Science and Technology
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in science and tech.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Science Fiction, Story
Dawn of Dianetics: L. Ron Hubbard, John W. Campbell, and the Origins of Scientology
Read an excerpt adapted from Alec Nevala-Lee’s book, Astounding.
Posted inBooks, Current Events, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Story
The Grieving Landscape
Upon discovering that her mother had been a member of the group Women Strike For Peace (WSP), Heidi Hutner becomes obsessed with feminist nuclear history.
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2022: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
All the stories we’ve selected as number one in our weekly Top 5 newsletter.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Science Fiction, Story, Uncategorized
Putting a New Stone on the Grave: Sjón Brings the Golem to Iceland
Sjón’s “CoDex 1962” is the fulfillment of a pact he made with the Maharal of Prague in the Old Jewish Cemetery almost three decades ago.
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Science Fiction, Story
Working Through the Apocalypse: An Interview with Ling Ma
In Ling Ma’s “Severance” — a novel she began to write after getting laid off, while living partly on severance pay — the characters keep going to work, even though they know it’s the end of the world.
Posted inFeature, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Story, Technology
Research and Rescue: Saving Species from Ourselves
We’re developing high-tech genetic tools to pour new life into animals lost to human destruction. Deciding how — and whether — to use that power is as complex as the science behind it.
Posted inFeature
‘Some Things Never Leave You’: Christian Livermore on Poverty’s Indelible Marks
“For me, passing means trying to be anything other than what I was, and what I fear so desperately I always will be: poor white trash.”
