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Featured Longreader: Tyler Gleason, student, intrepid explorer and politics enthusiast. See his story picks from The Atlantic, Mother Jones, Washington Monthly, plus more on his #longreads page.

Adele: One and Only

Longreads Pick

The newly minted Grammy winner’s lows and highs—from throat surgery and heartbreak to the biggest-selling album of last year:

“Every singer knows the List: citrus, vinegar, mint, dairy, spicy or fried foods, fizzy drinks, caffeine, cigarettes, and alcohol. These are the vocal cords’ enemies. And when one has a five-octave contralto as dynamic, award-winning, money­making, and record-breaking as Adele Laurie Blue Adkins does, one figures out how to avoid these things. Some require less effort than others. Mint? Vinegar? Feh. Cigarettes? Not so easy. Over the few days that I spend around Adele, I see her sneak a fag here and there. No one is perfect. But alcohol? For a once hard-drinking South London pub girl who has admitted that she has written some of her best songs after a few belts, I would have thought this might present something of a challenge. Not so much, it turns out. Adele hasn’t had a drink since last June.”

More Van Meter on Amazon: Last Good Time: Skinny D’amato, The Notorious 500 Club, And The Rise And Fall Of Atlantic City

Source: Vogue
Published: Feb 13, 2012
Length: 23 minutes (5,961 words)

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Salon, The Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Nature, a fiction pick, plus a guest pick from Emily Keeler.

An analysis of the presidency, in historical context:

I spoke with current and past members of this administration, officials from previous administrations, current and past members of the Senate and the House, and some academics. Compared with the last two times a Democrat was in the White House—during Jimmy Carter’s administration in the late 1970s and Bill Clinton’s in the 1990s—I found Democrats much more careful about criticizing their own party’s president during an election year. It’s not that Democrats have become so much more disciplined, nor, obviously, that they have no complaints, but rather that they seem more worried about the risks of helping the other side. I asked someone who has been close to Obama if I could interview him about his experiences. He said, “I’m not going to say anything that might hurt during the campaign.”

“Obama, Explained.” — James Fallows, The Atlantic

See more #longreads about Obama

An artist recreates Gettysburg with a lifelike cyclorama—and the painting changes how many people viewed the battle:

“No person should die without seeing this cyclorama,” declared a Boston man in 1885. “It’s a duty they owe to their country.” Paul Philippoteaux’s lifelike depiction of the Battle of Gettysburg was much more than a painting. It re-created the battlefield with such painstaking fidelity, and created an illusion so enveloping, that many visitors felt as if they were actually there.

For all its verisimilitude, though, the painting failed to capture the deeper truths of the Civil War. It showed the two armies in lavish detail, but not the clash of ideals that impelled them onto the battlefield. Its stunning rendition of a battle utterly divorced from context appealed to a nation as eager to remember the valor of those who fought as it was to forget the purpose of their fight. Its version of the conflict proved so alluring, in fact, that it changed the way America remembered the Civil War.

“The Great Illusion of Gettysburg.” — Yoni Appelbaum, The Atlantic

More Atlantic: “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?” — Ta-Nehisi Coates, Dec. 4, 2011

Thirty-two-year-old Luis Mijangos hacked into his victims’ computers, accessing their hard drives and even turning on their webcams:

Mijangos was an unlikely candidate for the world’s creepiest hacker. He lived at home with his mother, half brother, two sisters—one a schoolgirl, the other a housekeeper—and a perky gray poodle named Petra. It was a lively place, busy with family who gathered to watch soccer and to barbecue on the marigold-lined patio. Mijangos had a small bedroom in front, decorated in the red, white, and green of Mexican soccer souvenirs, along with a picture of Jesus. That’s where he spent most of his time, in front of his laptop—sitting in his wheelchair.

“The Hacker is Watching.” — David Kushner, GQ

See also: “Hacked!” — The Atlantic, Nov. 1, 2011

Featured Longreader: Writer Jess Weiss. See her story picks from Wired, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and more on her #longreads page.

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Featuring Sports Illustrated, GQ, Vanity Fair, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Guernica, plus a guest pick from Los Angeles Times staff writer Carolyn Kellogg.

Featured Longreader: Lexi Mainland, social media editor for The New York Times. See her story picks from Vanity Fair, New Yorker, The Atlantic and more on her #longreads page.

On modern manufacturing in the U.S. and the unskilled-skilled labor gap—with 92-year-old Standard Motor Products serving as a case study: 

Across America, many factory floors look radically different than they did 20 years ago: far fewer people, far more high-tech machines, and entirely different demands on the workers who remain. The still-unfolding story of manufacturing’s transformation is, in many respects, that of our economic age. It’s a story with much good news for the nation as a whole. But it’s also one that is decidedly less inclusive than the story of the 20th century, with a less certain role for people like Maddie Parlier, who struggle or are unlucky early in life.

“Making It in America.” — Adam Davidson, The Atlantic

See also: “The White House Looks for Work.” — Peter Baker, New York Times, Jan. 19, 2011