Search Results for: Washington Post

Longreads Best of 2012: Geoff Van Dyke

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Geoff Van Dyke is the editorial director of 5280 Magazine in Denver, Colorado. His writing has appeared in Outside, Men’s Journal, and The New York Times.

These are the stories that I emailed, posted, and tweeted the most this past year (and filed away in the digital filing cabinet for further reading). They are all remarkably reported, artfully written, and help us make sense of living in what feels like an increasingly crazy time.

“The Long Road to Theater 9,” by Brady Dennis, The Washington Post 

For a story about a mass shooting, “The Long Road” is remarkably hopeful. That it was reported and written just days after the shooting in Aurora, Colorado, makes the work itself that much more impressive.

“The Innocent Man, Parts 1 and 2,” by Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly  

I know everyone already picked this. I don’t care. Colloff’s massive two-parter is stunning in its ability to so smartly and compassionately tell this complicated story of crime, punishment, and exoneration without out being overwrought or preachy or sentimental.

“A Ring of One’s Own,” by Ariel Levy, The New Yorker  

My favorite profile of the year; like all great portraits, this one is actually much more: it’s about sports, gender, sexuality, family, race, and America.

“Cocaine Incorporated,” by Patrick Radden Keefe, The New York Times Magazine

I’m a sucker for a good business story. But it’s especially hard to resist a “business” piece that details the workings of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and includes lines like: “As a mirror image of a legal commodities business, the Sinaloa cartel brings to mind that old line about Ginger Rogers doing all the same moves as Fred Astaire, only backward and in heels.”

“‘Is he coming? Is he? Oh God, I think he is.’” by Sean Flynn, GQ

Spare, cinematic, brutal.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

Longreads List: Guns in America

Longreads Pick

From The Daily Beast’s David Sessions, a collection of stories on gun violence and policy in the U.S., featuring The Atlantic, Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek and Mother Jones.

Source: The Daily Beast
Published: Dec 15, 2012

Our Top 5 Longreads of the Weekfeaturing New York magazine, Washington Post, The Daily (RIP), Vanity Fair, The Guardian, fiction from The New Yorker and a guest pick by Reine Gammoh.

Longreads Member Exclusive: A Visit to Havana

This week, we’re proud to feature a Longreads Member Exclusive from Alma Guillermoprieto and The New York Review of Books.

Born in Mexico City, Guillermoprieto has covered Latin America for NYRB since 1994, and she has also written for The New Yorker, The Guardian and the Washington Post. Today’s feature, “A Visit to Havana,” is about her return to Cuba for Pope John Paul II’s arrival in 1998.

See an excerpt here.

p.s. You can support Longreads—and get more exclusives like this—by becoming a member for just $3 per month.


(Illustration by Kjell Reigstad)

Longreads Member Exclusive: A Visit to Havana

Longreads Pick

(Subscribe to Longreads to receive this and other weekly exclusives.) This week, we're proud to feature a  Member Exclusive from Alma Guillermoprieto and The New York Review of Books. Born in Mexico City, Guillermoprieto has covered Latin America for NYRB since 1994, and she has also written for The New Yorker, The Guardian and the Washington Post. Her books include Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution and Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America, which includes the below story, "A Visit to Havana," about her return to Cuba for Pope John Paul II’s arrival in 1998.

Published: Mar 26, 1998
Length: 35 minutes (8,874 words)

“My Son Is Schizophrenic. The ‘Reforms’ That I Worked for Have Worsened His Life.” — Paul Gionfriddo, The Washington Post

More from The Washington Post

A pool salesman struggles to cope with a weak economy, which has forced him to rethink the meaning of the American Dream:

‘You can’t be too safe or too smart about money with the economy now,’ Tyler said. ‘I want to save up and make the smart investments.’

‘You’ll make them,’ Frank said, nodding.

‘I want to have that absolute stability,’ Tyler said.

‘You’ll have it.’

They stayed out on the deck until the sun disappeared behind the townhouses. Frank went to bed just before midnight and awoke at 4. He always had been a sound sleeper, but lately he had been putting himself to bed with Tylenol PM and stirring awake to questions in the middle of the night. When had stability become the goal in America? What kind of dream was that? And in the economy of 2012, was it even attainable?

“Life of a Salesman: Selling Success, When the American Dream is Downsized.” — Eli Saslow, The Washington Post

More by Saslow

A marriage of convenience between two socialites in D.C. leads to murder:

Drath’s murder seized the front page of The Washington Post, which was as awkwardly tangled in the story as the rest of the city’s elite. One of The Post’s columnists attended the couple’s dinners, as did the reporter who covered the case for The Wall Street Journal. Over the years, Muth flooded the in-boxes of his media contacts with messages containing his thoughts on the day’s events and knowing tidbits of insider gossip — speculations about covert operations gone awry or rumors about fights between top generals — a habit that didn’t end with his wife’s death. Four days after he supposedly found Drath’s body, Muth forwarded a note that he originally sent to officials in the Pentagon. He intimated that the police considered Drath to be the unfortunate victim of an assassin who was hunting for him. ’ have to take a slain wife out to Arlington,’ he wrote, ‘mourn her, then find her killer.’

“The Worst Marriage in Georgetown.” Franklin Foer, New York Times Magazine

The Worst Marriage in Georgetown

Longreads Pick

A marriage of convenience between two socialites in D.C. leads to murder:

“Drath’s murder seized the front page of The Washington Post, which was as awkwardly tangled in the story as the rest of the city’s elite. One of The Post’s columnists attended the couple’s dinners, as did the reporter who covered the case for The Wall Street Journal. Over the years, Muth flooded the in-boxes of his media contacts with messages containing his thoughts on the day’s events and knowing tidbits of insider gossip — speculations about covert operations gone awry or rumors about fights between top generals — a habit that didn’t end with his wife’s death. Four days after he supposedly found Drath’s body, Muth forwarded a note that he originally sent to officials in the Pentagon. He intimated that the police considered Drath to be the unfortunate victim of an assassin who was hunting for him. ‘ have to take a slain wife out to Arlington,’ he wrote, ‘mourn her, then find her killer.'”

Published: Jul 6, 2012
Length: 24 minutes (6,006 words)

Consequence

In 2007, Eric Fair wrote an article in the Washington Post describing his experience as an interrogator in Iraq. He has had trouble finding a way to move on.

I tell my professor I am sick. I put away verb charts, participles, and lexicons, board a train for Washington, D.C., and meet with Department of Justice lawyers and Army investigators in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. I disclose everything. I provide pictures, letters, names, firsthand accounts, locations, and techniques. I talk about the hard site at Abu Ghraib, and I talk about the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I talk about what I did, what I saw, what I knew, and what I heard. I ride the train back to Princeton. I start drinking more. Sarah takes notice. I tell her to go to Hell.

I sit for my final Greek exam in August. It is a passage from Paul’s letter to the people of Thessalonica.

‘You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition.’

I am not one of the believers in Thessalonica. I am one of the abusers at Philippi.”

“Consequence.” — Eric Fair, Ploughshares