Longreads Best of 2015: Science

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in science writing.
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We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in science writing.
* * * Read more…

Justin Nobel | Atlas Obscura | November 2015 | 14 minutes (3,498 words)
Our latest Exclusive is a new story by Justin Nobel, co-funded by Longreads Members and published by Atlas Obscura.
Mark Essig | Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig | Basic Books | May 2015 | 20 minutes (5,293 words)
Below is an excerpt from Lesser Beasts, by Mark Essig, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky.
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Built in about 2550 bc, the Great Pyramid of Giza stands 455 feet tall and comprises some 2.3 million blocks of stone weighing about 13 billion pounds in aggregate. Archaeologists still argue over whether those stones were moved into place using levers, sledges, or oil-slicked ramps. Whatever the technical method, building the pyramids involved a feat of social engineering just as impressive as the mechanical: Egyptian authorities had to feed a workforce of thousands of people for decades at a time. Read more…

Sarah Helm | Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women | Nan A. Talese | March 2015 | 48 minutes (13,071 words)
Below is a chapter excerpted from Ravensbrück, by Sarah Helm, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky. Read more…

After 300 years of breathtaking innovation, people aren’t massively unemployed or indentured by machines. But to suggest how this could change, some economists have pointed to the defunct career of the second-most-important species in U.S. economic history: the horse.
For many centuries, people created technologies that made the horse more productive and more valuable—like plows for agriculture and swords for battle. One might have assumed that the continuing advance of complementary technologies would make the animal ever more essential to farming and fighting, historically perhaps the two most consequential human activities. Instead came inventions that made the horse obsolete—the tractor, the car, and the tank. After tractors rolled onto American farms in the early 20th century, the population of horses and mules began to decline steeply, falling nearly 50 percent by the 1930s and 90 percent by the 1950s.
Humans can do much more than trot, carry, and pull. But the skills required in most offices hardly elicit our full range of intelligence. Most jobs are still boring, repetitive, and easily learned. The most-common occupations in the United States are retail salesperson, cashier, food and beverage server, and office clerk. Together, these four jobs employ 15.4 million people—nearly 10 percent of the labor force, or more workers than there are in Texas and Massachusetts combined. Each is highly susceptible to automation, according to the Oxford study.
Technology creates some jobs too, but the creative half of creative destruction is easily overstated. Nine out of 10 workers today are in occupations that existed 100 years ago, and just 5 percent of the jobs generated between 1993 and 2013 came from “high tech” sectors like computing, software, and telecommunications. Our newest industries tend to be the most labor-efficient: they just don’t require many people. It is for precisely this reason that the economic historian Robert Skidelsky, comparing the exponential growth in computing power with the less-than-exponential growth in job complexity, has said, “Sooner or later, we will run out of jobs.”
—In “A World Without Work,” Atlantic senior editor Derek Thompson argues it’s time to plan for a future in which machines, from driverless cars to operating room robots, do most of our current jobs.
Family, politics, rural identity—and water: A new Longreads Exclusive by illustrator-journalist Susie Cagle on the plight of East Porterville, California, and what happens to agriculture when the last drop is gone.

Susie Cagle | Longreads | June 2015 | 21 minutes (5,160 words)
The sun was going down in East Porterville, California, diffusing gold through a thick and creamy fog, as Donna Johnson pulled into the parking lot in front of the Family Dollar.

Since the valley started running dry, this has become Johnson’s favorite store. The responsibilities were getting overwhelming for the 70-year-old: doctors visits and scans for a shoulder she injured while lifting too-heavy cases of water; a trip to the mechanic to fix the truck door busted by an overeager film crew; a stop at the bank to deposit another generous check that’s still not enough to cover the costs of everything she gives away; a million other small tasks and expenses. But at the Family Dollar she was singularly focused, in her element. Read more…

Diane Ackerman | The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us | W. W. Norton & Company | September 2014 | 16 minutes (3,877 words)
Below is an excerpt from the book The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us, by Diane Ackerman, as recommended by Longreads contributor Dana Snitzky. Read more…

—Engineer Joshua Pearce, as interviewed by Yvonne Bang in Nautilus. The interview explores how we as a planet could feed 7 billion people after a global catastrophe.

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in science writing.
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Virginia Hughes
Science reporter and soon-to-be science editor at BuzzFeed.
I’ve thought about this story (an excerpt from Storr’s book, The Unpersuadables) many, many times since reading it. It’s superficially about Morgellons, a disease in which people think that they’re infected with bugs or fibers. But it’s really about the nature of disease and diagnosis, evidence and belief. It’s creepy, fascinating, and profound. The best part about it is the way Storr describes these patients and their delusions. It would be easy to make them seem stupid or crazy or worse. But Storr’s writing creates empathy and understanding. The not-insignificant downside of this piece: it makes you feel itchy. Read more…
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