“We compiled Reconstruction-era documents to identify 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans given land—only to have it returned to their enslavers.”
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Posted inEditor's Pick
Can 3-D Printing Help Solve the Housing Crisis?
“Standard construction can be slow, costly, and inefficient. Machines might do it better.”
Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Rebecca Solnit
The author of The Beginning Comes After the End talks about jackrabbits, her own “informational hypervigilance,” and the one word she won’t stop using.
Posted inCuration, Nonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend stories by Yessenia Funes, Carl Elliott, Courtney Shea, Jillian Steinhauer, and Ed Simon.
Posted inEditor's Pick
How to Quit Cars
“The history of transportation will always be social history, writ large.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
We Were Known For Our Rivers
“A grieving daughter channels family memories along the Nueces.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘It Changed the World’: 50 Years On, the Story of Pong’s Bay Area Origins
“How Atari created the world’s most famous video game.”
Posted inReading List
Knotty Business: A Delightfully Tangled Reading List on Knots
Six stories on our fascination with knots.
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Was Twitter, Anyway?
“Whether the platform is dying or not, it’s time to reckon with how exactly it broke our brains.”
Posted inNewsletter
Mulling Desire, Honoring Murdered Women, and Our Top 5
I had no idea that the hot, tingly pain of blood returning to a frozen extremity is called the screaming barfies, until I read “What Is a Body For?” by Diana Saverin.
