The Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay on DIY touring in the punk underground of the former Soviet Union.
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Posted inEditor's Pick
Podcasting and the Selling of Public Radio
Public radio, podcasting, and advertising on the free market.
Posted inNonfiction
A Dead Superhero Is a Marvelous Corpse
A theory of superhero suffering and death.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
A Fish So Coveted People Have Smuggled, Kidnapped, and Killed For It
The Asian arowana or “dragon fish” is protected by the Endangered Species Act and illegal to own in the U.S. But the tropical fish’s status symbol among wealthy buyers has made it the object of a thriving black market.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Benefits of Being No. 2 in Business
Back in the early 1960s, also-ran Avis — a smaller, less successful business than Hertz — decided to run a new advertising campaign, one that embraced its market position rather than trying to change it. “When you’re only No. 2, you try harder. Or else,” the company’s advertisements read. Avis’s initial business insight was to […]
Longreads Membership FAQ
What is the Longreads Membership, and why should I join? The Longreads Membership is reader-funded storytelling. That means every dollar you contribute goes into a story fund to pay for original essays, reporting, podcasts, and story partnerships with other publishers. We work with writers, producers, artists, and publishers around the world. We pay for work that […]
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
The Craft of Cooking
An Interview with “America’s Test Kitchen” founder Christopher Kimball on how cooking is like woodworking, the business model behind “Cooks Illustrated,” and the awesome powers of baking soda and gelatin.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Joyce Maynard on Taking James Patterson’s Online Course in Writing Bestsellers
Lately, just about every time I turn to Facebook or Twitter, I’m greeted by an ad or sponsored content about the online writing course bestselling thriller author James Patterson offers on the MasterClass site (where Dustin Hoffman, Annie Liebovitz, Usher, Serena Williams and others serve up the tricks to their trades, too). “Set out to […]
Posted inNonfiction
Borges and $: The Parable of the Literary Master and the Coin
Thirty years ago, the world lost a great literary mind—the Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. Today, Elizabeth Hyde Stevens revisits the financial conditions that produced this life of pure literature, finding unexpected hope in the darkest period of Borges’ forgotten past.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How the Hand Painted Rock ‘n’ Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip Came to Be
Collectors Weekly: Who started the music industry’s billboard trend?
Landau: As far as I can tell, it was the Doors in 1967 for their debut album. I talked with Jac Holzman—the head of Elektra Records who signed the Doors—while writing my book. In 1967, he had just come out here from the East Coast and opened an office on La Cienega Boulevard, not far from Sunset Boulevard, and it occurred to him that billboards were being used for everything except promoting records and music. A lot of radio stations where popular disc jockeys worked were farther east on Sunset, and he knew they drove on the Strip, and that the entertainment industry in general was based there.
