All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2015. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
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Posted inNonfiction
What Ever Happened to ‘The Most Liberated Woman in America’?
Barbara Williamson co-founded one of the most famous radical sex experiments in America. Then she got wild.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Arabs, Jews, and Israel’s Pork Industry
Surprisingly, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and a staunch secularist, opposed pork consumption. He viewed eating pork as a recent Jewish diasporic cultural development that Israelis needed to shed in order to forge a united Israeli identity. In 1962 the Knesset officially outlawed the breeding and selling of pigs, except for in Arab-Christian areas, […]
Posted inFeature
The Life and Murder of Stella Walsh, Intersex Olympic Champion
Eighty years ago, in Berlin, Stella Walsh won her second Olympic medal. Decades later, Walsh’s murder and subsequent autopsy threw the legacy of track’s first female superstar into turmoil.
Posted inNonfiction
Gravity
‘My daughter doesn’t have a father, or, she has two fathers, since I don’t know which man her father is. One of her fathers says it’s like Schrödinger’s cat in there.’
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Whistleblower’s Horror Story
Michael Winston blew the while on Countrywide’s reckless subprime lending practices. He lost his job and has been diagnosed with laryngeal cancer.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
STAT: My Daughter’s MS Diagnosis and the Question My Doctors Couldn’t Answer
Is there a dietary treatment for multiple sclerosis? And if so, why is the medical establishment ignoring published academic research that started in the 1950s proving it?
Posted inNonfiction
Narcissiana: On Collecting
An entomologist reflects on fly-hunting, an outhouse of distinguished provenance, and the narcissism of collectors.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * * 1. The Friend Matthew Teague | Esquire | May 10, 2015 | 24 minutes (6,032 words) Matthew Teague’s wife, Nicole, was only 34 […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
Jenny Diski on a Cancer Diagnosis and Keeping a Diary
We’d hardly got home before I said: ‘Well, I suppose I’m going to write a cancer diary.’ The only other thing I might have said was: ‘Well, I’m not going to write a cancer diary.’ Right there: a choice? I’m a writer, have been since I was small, and have earned my living at it […]
