Here’s every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
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Posted inNonfiction
Best of 2022: All of our No. 5 Story Picks
All the stories we’ve selected as number five in our weekly Top 5 newsletter.
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we have stories from Suzy Hansen, Raksha Vasudevan, Linda Kinstler, Erica Berry, and Dave Denison.
Posted inReading List
Ten Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2025
Kickstart your reading year with 10 short stories selected by longtime contributor Pravesh Bhardwaj.
Posted inUncategorized
Fabulous Fungi and Our Top 5 of the Week
“To a reading list on these mind-bending entities at a planetary tipping point, welcome. What you see here are only some fruiting bodies, the rest lies underneath.” I first learned about the parasitic fungus that takes over a bug’s body and commandeers its brain back in 2023, when I picked Zhengyang Wang’s “The Last of […]
Posted inReading List
TikTok Covens and QAnon Shamans: A Reading List on Neo-Paganism
People in the West are responding to modern life by reviving ancient pagan spiritual practices.
Posted inEditor's Pick
At War with the Truth
“A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”
Posted inUncategorized
(Alleged) Kings of the Con and the Week’s Top 5
“[T]he most compelling tales of grift aren’t the ones that depend on technology: the bottomless library of fraud-ready photos; the platforms that let anyone claim to be an epidemiologist or electoral fraud whistleblower; the software that can plop your face onto another person’s. No, the tales that captivate us most almost always reveal a person’s longing.” […]
Posted inNonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Ben Taub, Paige Blankenbuehler, Alex Horton, Victoria Gannon, and Gustavo Arellano.
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2020: Writing on COVID-19
Our top story picks in COVID-19 reporting this year.
