Is the conversation around guns in this country really about the right to bear arms?
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Using the British Railway Mania of the 1840s to Explain the Beanie Baby Craze
Andrew Odlyzko, a mathematician and bubble expert, proposes a simpler theory explaining speculative panics in his study on the British Railway Mania of the 1840s. Odlyzko credits Railway Mania in part to a “collective hallucination,” an extreme form of groupthink wherein a significant chunk of society feverishly buys into a shared dream with no regard for the skeptics and […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Whale Tales: A Reading List
These four stories demonstrate humans’ multi-faceted relationship with whales–where politics, the environment and the economy intermingle with love, terror and cruelty.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
An Exegesis on Spanking Fetishists
Jillian Keenan on her new memoir, which delves into her lifelong obsessions with spanking and Shakespeare.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Palpable, Yet ‘Incomprehensible Expanse of Time’: A Wilderness of Waiting
I am used to pausing beside train trestles, tilting my head to watch passing planes, perpetually looking forward to: to the evening, to the weekend, to the next year in a new place. But for the first time I find myself unable to fix my gaze on the horizon; I find my relationship to time […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week, featuring, The New Yorker, Die Zeit, Jezebel, The New York Times, and Slate.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Why the World Is Betting on a Better Battery: A Reading List
Nick Leiber | Longreads | March 2015 The first battery, a pile of copper and zinc discs, was invented more than 200 years ago, ushering in the electric age. Subsequent versions led to portable electronics, mobile computing, and our current love affair with smartphones (1,000 of which are shipped every 22 seconds). Now batteries are […]
Posted inReading List
Beyond the Simply Salacious: Five Stories on Adultery
Here are five stories born of adultery. Read about technological advancements for philanderers and their cuckolds, personal perspectives from the cheater and the cheatee, a forbidden lust-fueled crime story, and a piece on how adultery became bedfellows with American popular culture and music—back in 1909. 1. “The Cuckold” (James Harms, Guernica, February 17, 2014) “The cuckold […]
Posted inNonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women
Unchain My Heart: On the Emotional Effectiveness—and Lingering Sexism—of Jewish Divorce
Sari Botton explores the dark side of a tradition that has for millennia subverted women’s rights.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
‘The World Is Full of Obvious Things’: A Sherlock Holmes Reading List
Sherlock Holmes feels uncannily contemporary these days — from his dizzying array of post-hipsterish quirks (Cocaine user! Virtuosic violin player! Exotic tobacco aficionado!) to a social aloofness that feels straight out of a Millennial INTP‘s playbook. (His knack for Twitter-ready aphorisms doesn’t hurt, either.) I’ve been rereading Conan Doyle’s stories for almost 20 years, and the guy has never felt more fresh.
