Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. 1. This Old Man Roger Angell | The New Yorker | February 17, 2014 | 20 minutes (5,062 words) On life as a nonagenarian: […]
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Jesus Land: Our Longreads Member Pick
For this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share the opening chapter of Jesus Land, the bestselling 2012 memoir by Julia Scheeres about her strict Christian upbringing in Indiana, her relationship with her adopted brother David, and the stint they did in a Christian reform school together in the Dominican Republic. Our thanks to Scheeres […]
‘I Would Prefer Not To’: The Origins of the White Collar Worker
Before the Civil War, the clerk was “a small but unusual phenomenon.” By the end of the 19th century, clerical workers were a social force to be reckoned with. This is the story of their rise.
Interview with a Torturer
Documentary filmmaker and Khmer Rouge survivor Rithy Panh spent hundreds of hours interviewing Duch, the commandant of the Cambodia “killing fields” and one of the most notorious torturers of the 20th century. This is his haunting memoir of those interviews.
The Skies Belong to Us: How Hijackers Created an Airline Crisis in the 1970s
Brendan I. Koerner | The Skies Belong to Us | 2013 | 25 minutes (6,186 words) ‘There Is No Way to Tell a Hijacker by Looking At Him’ When the FAA’s antihijacking task force first convened in February 1969, its ten members knew they faced a daunting challenge—not only because of the severity of the […]
Jesus Land
“They don’t know the first thing about us; they just hate us because we’re black.”
Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
“There were a million heavenly things to see and a million spectacular ways to die.”
The Last Hand-Me-Down: Retracing My Brother’s Life Through His Clothes
Tom Molanphy | Loud Memories of a Quiet Life (OutPost 19) | May 2012 | 18 minutes (4,652 words) Tom Molanphy earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. He freelances for 10Best/Travel Media Group at USA Today and teaches creative writing, composition and journalism at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. This […]
The Bohemians: The San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature
Ben Tarnoff | The Bohemians, Penguin Press | March 2014 | 46 minutes (11,380 words) Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks) For our Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share the opening chapter of The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature, the book by Ben Tarnoff, published by The Penguin Press.
Longreads Best of 2012: Kiera Feldman
Kiera Feldman is a reporter for The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund. She wrote “Grace in Broken Arrow” for This Land Press, which was featured on Longreads in May. I’m of the belief that a good murder story should put you out of commission for a while. There is a storyworld to journey into, and it is a doozy. […]

