Search Results for: The Nation

The Real-Life Swedish Murder that Inspired Stieg Larsson

Longreads Pick

Long before the books of Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell shone a light on Sweden’s dark underbelly, there was the murder of Catrine da Costa. It’s a case that continues to shock, baffle and divide the nation.

Source: The Telegraph
Published: Dec 3, 2010
Length: 12 minutes (3,013 words)

Deadly Medicine

Deadly Medicine

Michelle Legro: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010

Michelle Legro is an editor for Lapham’s Quarterly (who you should be following on Tumblr!)

michellelegro:

If you aren’t one of the more than 10,000 people who follow @longreads on Twitter, or get the Longreads Instapaper feed on your iPhone or iPad, then do so immediately. Every day there are perfectly curated features of long-form journalism, new and old, to discover and send along to others.

1. Garry Kasparov, “The Chess Master and the Computer” (NYRB) + Clive Thompson, “What is IBM’s Watson?” (NYT Magazine)

Did you know that 2010 is the year grandmaster Garry Kasparov declared man’s battle for chess supremacy over machines at an end? Instead, the machine must take on a new game, and the subtle questions of Jeopardy are the next ambitious goal for IBM programmers. 

2. Veronica Mittnacht, “An Advice Columnist Asks for Advice” (The Rumpus)

Of the many, many essays about navigating life after college, this one really takes to heart the essential contradiction of youth: “How did we become so ambitious and afraid?”

3. Ed Dante, “The Shadow Scholar” (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Speaking of fear, be afraid. Not of the skills of this professional paper writer—who can charm a twenty-five page essay about any topic you like from mid-air. Be afraid of everyone out there who has ever used him. Doctors, nurses, businessmen, teachers, seminary students, everyone

4. Zadie Smith, “Generation Why?” (NYRB) + Jose Antonio Vargas, “The Face of Facebook Opens Up” (The New Yorker)

It’s really worth getting to the dark heart of the Zuckerberg in this NYer profile before reading Smith’s screed about Facebook and the Social Network, if just to get some perspective. 

5. And the best Longread of 2010 is, without a doubt, the very insightful, funny, and of course frustrating look into the Senate by George Packer, “The Empty Chamber” (The New Yorker) Please, just give him all the National Magazine Awards right now. 

Application Inflation: When Is Enough Enough?

Longreads Pick

UCLA said its accepted students had “demonstrated excellence in all aspects of their lives.” Citing its record 57,670 applications, the university proclaimed itself “the most popular campus in the nation.” Such announcements tell a story in which colleges get better — and students get more amazing — every year. In reality, the narrative is far more complex, and the implications far less sunny for students as well as colleges caught up in the cruel cycle of selectivity.

Published: Nov 5, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,086 words)

Mikhail Prokhorov, the Playboy and His Power Games

Longreads Pick

You might think that Mikhail Prokhorov would have had a not-so-soft case of buyer’s remorse this past spring. A month before the start of the National Basketball Association season, the 45-year-old Russian billionaire struck a deal to buy the New Jersey Nets from the real estate developer Bruce C. Ratner. When the league owners finally ratified the sale eight months later, the Nets record stood at 12 wins and 70 losses, and Prokhorov’s shiny new team was the laughingstock of the NBA

Author: Chip Brown
Published: Oct 28, 2010
Length: 33 minutes (8,343 words)

‘Why Has He Fallen Short?’

Longreads Pick

Of course Barack Obama was too hot not to cool down. He was the one so many were waiting for—not only the first African-American president but also the nation’s long-awaited liberator after eight years of Bush-Cheney, the golden-tongued evangelist who could at long last revive and sell the old liberal faith, the first American president in memory to speak to voters as if they might be thinking adults, the first national politician in years to electrify the young. He was even, of all implausible oddities, a contemporary politician-author who actually wrote his own books.

Author: Frank Rich
Published: Aug 19, 2010
Length: 17 minutes (4,310 words)

Something About Sally

Longreads Pick

Sally Quinn hit the nation’s capital in 1969, becoming one of The Washington Post’s most glamorous stars; sweeping Ben Bradlee, its legendary (and married) editor, off his feet; conquering Georgetown society—and making serious enemies along the way.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jul 1, 2010
Length: 23 minutes (5,933 words)

A Distribution of Chairs

Longreads Pick

My visit to West Bengal comes more than 16 years after India’s parliament ordered the nation’s local governments to save a third of their seats for women. At that time, the Women’s Reservation Bill passed with hardly any discussion and no opposition, also demanding quotas for certain castes and tribes. Today, India has more women in government than any country on the planet. And yet, India’s parliament is still debating whether to pass a women’s quota for its own seats.

Author: Anrica Deb
Published: Apr 14, 2010
Length: 29 minutes (7,410 words)

Brand Of Brothers

Longreads Pick

The Emerald City produces some of the nation’s best basketball players, a proud fraternity whose alumni in the NBA are dedicated to mentoring younger talents through high school and college.

Published: Feb 22, 2010
Length: 12 minutes (3,112 words)

The California Experiment

Longreads Pick

Busted budgets, failing schools, overcrowded prisons, gridlocked government—California no longer beckons as America’s promised land. Except, that is, in one area: creating a new energy economy. But is its path one the rest of the nation can follow?

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Oct 1, 2009
Length: 23 minutes (5,867 words)