How the introduction of stats into MMA (mixed martial arts) will change how the matches are fought: For all that enthusiasm, however, the sport has had a weak spot: It can be surprisingly difficult to say with any specificity what makes a mixed martial artist great, or what makes one fighter better than another. In […]
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A writer digs into his grandfather’s past and discovers stories about life as a professional basketball player in the 1940s for the Chicago Stags, part of the BAA (Basketball Association of America), which later merged with another league to become the NBA: Detroit’s coach gave Schadler the score: ‘I have a wife and kids, and […]
Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: GQ, The New Yorker, Inc. Magazine, The Classical, New York Magazine, #fiction from Guernica, plus a guest pick from Largehearted Boy’s David Gutowski.
A look back at James Watson’s book The Double Helix and the controversy it stirred in the science community. In telling the story, he produced a great work of literary nonfiction. Watson expanded the boundaries of science writing to include not only the formal, public face of Nobel-winning discoveries but also the day-to-day life of […]
A percussionist’s nerve-wracking audition for the Boston Symphony Orchestra: The classical audition ranks among the world’s toughest job interviews. Each applicant has 10 minutes at most to play in a way so memorable that he stands out among a lineup of other world-class musicians. Tetreault has prestigious degrees from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School […]
In the early 20th Century, six-day bike races were some of the biggest sporting events in the U.S.—not to mention grueling and dangerous: In the four corners of the old Chicago Stadium, faux-Greek sculptures depicted the premier indoor athletes of the day: a boxer, a track runner, a hockey player, and a bicyclist. Though outdoor […]
Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week: SCOTUSblog, Esquire, New York Times Health, Outside magazine, The Classical, fiction from Nathan Englander, winner of the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, plus guest picks from Laura Nelson.
What are your career options when you are seven feet tall? A tall writer meets a tall wrestler: Paul Wight, bless him, seems to think of his massive size as a gift from God, not a devil’s bargain. There was a moment earlier this year when Wight was rumored to be fighting Shaq at this […]
Top 5 Longreads of the Week: The New York Times Magazine, The Classical, National Geographic, Chicago Reader, The Morning News, fiction, plus a guest pick from Kriston Capps.
From Featured Longreader, Emily Douglas: Solomon brings us the agonizing dilemmas faced by women pregnant as a result of assault (some feel pressured into having abortion and experience that as a second violation; others carry pregnancy to term and struggle desperately to bond with their children). And he forces us to confront how foundational a […]
