“The higher education mantra is possibly the greatest cliché in American public life.” Thomas Frank argues that greed has taken over at most universities in the U.S., causing costs to spiral out of control, administrators to proliferate, and professors’ work to be outsourced to instructors with no benefits or job security: “We don’t pause to […]
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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 […]
Longreads Member Exclusive: The American Nonconformist, by Thomas Frank
This week’s Longreads Member pick is “The American Nonconformist in the Age of the Commercialization of Dissent,” a 1992 essay by Thomas Frank from The Baffler, the magazine he cofounded with Keith White in 1988. Frank writes: “In republishing this bit of juvenilia from 1992—my very first exploration of an idea that I reworked and reconsidered […]
Longreads Member Exclusive: The American Nonconformist in the Age of the Commercialization of Dissent
This week’s Longreads Member pick is “The American Nonconformist in the Age of the Commercialization of Dissent,” a 1992 essay by Thomas Frank from The Baffler, the magazine he cofounded with Keith White in 1988. Frank writes: “In republishing this bit of juvenilia from 1992—my very first exploration of an idea that I reworked and reconsidered […]
Making the Magazine: A Reading List
27 must-read stories on the making of the world’s greatest magazines.
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 […]
Making the Magazine: A Reading List
27 must-read stories on the making of the world’s greatest magazines.
Why the sudden proliferation of “vibrant” communities in the United States? And what does it even mean? Is Rockford, Illinois, vibrant? Oh my god yes: according to a local news outlet, the city’s ‘Mayor’s Arts Award nominees make Rockford vibrant.’ The Quad Cities? Check: As their tourism website explains, the four hamlets are ‘a vibrant […]
The Top 10 Longreads of 2012
About This List Thanks to everyone who has participated in the Longreads community this year, and to all of our guests who shared their favorite stories of 2012. The below list represents our editors’ favorite stories of the year, for both nonfiction and fiction. Longreads is edited by Mark Armstrong and Mike Dang, with Kjell Reigstad, […]
5 Great Stories on the Lives of Poets
“If I knew where poems came from, I’d go there.”
