John Fairchild turned his family’s dry fashion trade journal, Women’s Wear Daily into one of today’s most influential fashion publications. The 85-year-old looks back on his controversial career: Unlike in Paris, where couture designers were revered, Seventh Avenue was then dominated by garmentos while the designers toiled in the back rooms as relative unknowns. Fairchild […]
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[Fiction] A philandering husband’s next phase in life: Horace and Loneese Perkins—one child, one grandchild—lived most unhappily together for more than twelve years in Apartment 230 at Sunset House, a building for senior citizens at 1202 Thirteenth Street NW. They moved there in 1977, the year they celebrated forty years of marriage, the year they made […]
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A political reporter desperately searches for a sign of joy in this year’s presidential race: I am as cynical as any political reporter. And perhaps my recent craving for uplift was a sublimation of my own anger at being a small cog in a giant inanity machine. But I write and read and talk about […]
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An Iraq war veteran becomes blind during combat, and learns how to live on: When the doctors told him the blindness was irreversible, he felt a rage and despair that made him feel like his head would explode. Castro began therapy a week after waking up, and he only halfheartedly endured the rehab sessions with […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
3 Stories from Young Journalists Honored at the Livingston Awards
The Livingston Awards are handed out every year to celebrate outstanding work from journalists under 35. Here are this year’s winning stories, honored this week in New York: “Slavery’s Last Stronghold” (John D. Sutter & Edythe McNamee, CNN.com) International Reporting winner: A trip to Mauritania, where an estimated 10% to 20% of the population lives in slavery. […]
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‘My Body Stopped Speaking to Me’: The First-Person Account of a Near-Death Experience
Our recent Longreads Member Pick by National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello from GQ is now free for everyone. Special thanks to our Longreads Members for helping bring these stories to you—if you’re not a member, join us here. “My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” is a personal story about Corsello’s near-death experience, first published […]
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Reading List: A Bizarre Institution
Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps. What do Scientology, child abuse, financial exploitation, and millionaire parents have in common? They’ve all got a niche in the education system. 1. “Surviving a For-Profit School.” (Stephen S. Mills, The Rumpus, July 2013) A […]
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Playlist: 5 Podcast Episodes on the History of Hip-Hop
Gabrielle Gantz (@contextual_life) is the blogger behind The Contextual Life, a frequent longreader, and a fan of podcasts. 1. How Hip-Hop Works (Stuff You Should Know, 52:13) In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Chuck and Josh discuss the history of hip-hop, from The Sugar Hill Gang to the present. They add their own […]
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‘Quebrado’: The Life and Death of a Young Activist
“If you survive me, tell them this: I never gave up.”
