“That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.” -Paul Beatty’s satirical novel The Sellout, winner of the […]
Search results
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our top stories of the week, as chosen by the editors at Longreads.
Posted inNonfiction
The Red Zone: A Love Story
A severe form of PMS puts Chloe Caldwell’s new relationship to the test.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Forever Yesterday: Peering Inside My Mom’s Fading Mind
Kevin Sampsell bears witness to the ways in which Alzheimer’s has been pulling his mother back in time, and taking over her life.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Is the Internet Changing Time?
“Fragments of the past are for the first time on tap, not stored away in boxes,” writes Laurence Scott.
Posted inArts & Culture, Editor's Pick, Nonfiction
Building In the Shadow of Our Own Destruction
Those who would build enormous structures—skyscrapers, bridges, border walls—should do so with an eye toward their eventual ruin.
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Reading List
Five Stories About Espionage
Today’s spying relies on social media, surveillance, coercion and ambition.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Longreads Best of 2016: Crime Reporting
We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here, the best in crime reporting.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Jim Harrison, Free-Spirited Writer of ‘Legends of the Fall,’ Dies at 78
An obituary for writer Jim Harrison, whose “lust for life—and sometimes just plain lust—roared into print in a vast, celebrated body of fiction, poetry and essays that with ardent abandon explored the natural world, the life of the mind and the pleasures of the flesh.”
Posted inStory, Unapologetic Women
On Becoming a Woman Who Knows Too Much
Through my education I’d become a trusted source of specialized knowledge. But how could I become the kind of leader who is surrounded with people like me?
