“In the days before this Halloween, it was especially hard for me to avoid interpreting its elements too bluntly. If you have cancer, if you’ve had it for a while, at some point you start really seeing all those skulls and skeletons and Styrofoam headstones, all those children in hooded capes, bearing scythes on their […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
A Tale of Two Drugs
A cancer drug offers no obvious advantages over an alternative drug, but is also twice as expensive. Why? The writer looks at how drug companies determine prices: “Because of medical insurance, co-pay reductions, and expanded access programs for the uninsured, relatively few Americans pay more than a few thousand dollars per year for even the […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Evangelist
Jim Gilliam was a precocious young conservative Christian who grew up in Silicon Valley and became a talented programmer. After fighting cancer, he lost his faith in God and found a passion for progressive causes. NationBuilder, a piece of software he built to—in his own words—help “democratize democracy,” has had some of his progressive friends […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Man Who Buried His Treasure in a Poem
An art dealer diagnosed with kidney cancer formulates a plan to bury some of his treasure and leave clues to its whereabouts in a self-published book: “Dal Neitzel is just one of hundreds of people who have contacted Fenn to let him know they’ve been searching for his haul. Before he set out, after poring […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Social Life of Genes
How our environment, our sense of support, and our feelings of loneliness can activate or turn off specific genes in our bodies that affect things like how we fight or heal wounds. An examination of the “social science of genetics”: “Scientists have known for decades that genes can vary their level of activity, as if […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Wracked With Cancer, St. Petersburg Senior Has One Goal: Graduation
A teenager with cancer is fighting to make it to her high school graduation: “At the end of her junior year, the doctors said there was nothing more they could do for Lyndsey. ‘Six months to a year,’ they told her. She might not even be alive for her family to break the no-applause rule. […]
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Reading List: Amazing People for Desperate Times
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. I have a group of comedian friends; we go bowling every Wednesday and contribute to a magazine called The Annual. In the wake of recent personal misfortune, they’ve been a refuge for me. After […]
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013 Postscript: New Questions About a Legendary Tennis Match
The Match Maker Don Van Natta Jr. | ESPN | August 2013 | 34 minutes (8,461 words) Don Van Natta Jr. (@DVNJr) is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. My story, The Match Maker, was online at ESPN.com only a few hours on Aug. 25 when I heard from a California man […]
Posted inUncategorized
Reading List: Amazing People for Desperate Times
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. I have a group of comedian friends; we go bowling every Wednesday and contribute to a magazine called The Annual. In the wake of recent personal misfortune, they’ve been a refuge for me. After […]
Posted inUncategorized
Reading List: One in Seven Billion
Emily Perper is word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. The student journalist, the Afghani mother, the elderly custodian, the Chinese orphan boy: each of these pieces forces the reader to stop and consider the extraordinary stories of seemingly ordinary people. 1. “At 99, A St. Petersburg Man Finds Meaning […]
