How the 2012 GOP primary became such a mess—and what it means for the future of the party: That Mitt Romney finds himself so imperiled by Rick Santorum—Rick Santorum!—is just the latest in a series of jaw-dropping developments in what has been the most volatile, unpredictable, and just plain wackadoodle Republican-nomination contest ever. Part of […]
Search results
Posted inUncategorized
The key to solving hunger in Africa starts with improving the soil. An overview of agricultural subsidies and the debate over whether the best approach is through inorganic fertilizers or greener, cheaper (but more difficult) solutions like no-till farming: Fertilizer use in Africa is at the mercy of precarious politics. Although Rwanda’s fertilizer programme is […]
Posted inUncategorized
Edward Conard is Mitt Romney’s former partner at Bain, and he’s not afraid to have an honest conversation about wealth: A central problem with the U.S. economy, he told me, is finding a way to get more people to look for solutions despite these terrible odds of success. Conard’s solution is simple. Society benefits if […]
Posted inUncategorized
A history of how chickens went from the jungle to dinner tables all around the world: Europeans arriving in North America found a continent teeming with native turkeys and ducks for the plucking and eating. Some archaeologists believe that chickens were first introduced to the New World by Polynesians who reached the Pacific coast of […]
Posted inUncategorized
The Occupy movement is trying to figure out its future, and keep the momentum going: But Ross, too, soon found himself enchanted by the possibility of the movement. A trained economist, he decided to start an Alternative Banking working group, with the ambitious plan of setting up an Occupy Bank – built on a cooperative, […]
Posted inUncategorized
What Estonia can teach us about economic recovery—and how The country’s leaders got into a fight with New York Times columnist Paul Krugnan: On June 6, in a blog post titled ‘Estonian Rhapsody,’ Krugman took on what he called ‘the poster child for austerity defenders.’ In his post, he graphed real GDP from the height […]
Posted inUncategorized
A look at the illegal tunnels that have been dug under the Arizona-Mexico border by Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs, and how U.S. law enforcement teams are dealing with them: Crime has been coming up out of the ground in Nogales for a while now. Since 1995 more than 90 illicit underground passageways have been […]
Posted inUncategorized
The wealthiest Americans are effectively seceding from this country—raising questions about the long-term goals of conservatism: If a morally acceptable American conservatism is ever to extricate itself from a pseudo-scientific inverted Marxist economic theory, it must grasp that order, tradition, and stability are not coterminous with an uncritical worship of the Almighty Dollar, nor with […]
Posted inUncategorized
Longreads Best of 2012: Howard Riefs
Howard Riefs is a prolific Longreader and a communications consultant in Chicago. Best Series This Land, Dan Barry, The New York Times “The dateline is Elyria, Ohio, a city of 55,000 about 30 miles southwest of Cleveland. You know this town, even if you have never been here. A place buffeted by time and the economy, a place […]
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
‘Like Being in Prison with a Salary’: The Secret World of the Shipping Industry
Rose George | Metropolitan Books | August 2013 | 17 minutes (4,213 words) The following is the opening chapter of Rose George’s new book, Ninety Percent of Everything. Our thanks to the author for sharing it with the Longreads community. * * * Friday. No sensible sailor goes to sea on the day of the Crucifixion or the […]
