How Joe Paterno’s former protégé became the star witness in the Jerry Sandusky trial: Long before the presentment became public, players, coaches and residents heard rumors — that McQueary saw Sandusky fondle the boy, or that they were engaged in horseplay. But suddenly the rumors were not only true, they had mushroomed into the biggest […]
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Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Escape from Baghdad!: Saad Hossain’s New Satire of the Iraq War
In his debut, Saad Hossain brings a much-needed cynicism to our literature of the Iraq War. An absurdist protest novel in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 or Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Escape from Baghdad! relentlessly focuses the reader’s attention on the folly of war.
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Family & Football Overcame Tragedy
A community in Texas grapples with the deaths of two high school students: “The Friday night before that Sunday at Possum Kingdom Lake, Coppell played an away game at Hebron High School in Carrollton. Jacob went up to Solomon and said, ‘What’s wrong with you? You haven’t gotten any sacks all season!’ The two had […]
Posted inNonfiction
Curses: A Tribute to Losing Teams and Easy Scapegoats
Barry Grass | The Normal School | Spring 2014 | 18 minutes (4,537 words) 1st Late in every February, Major League Baseball players report to Spring Training. Every year in Kansas City this is heralded by a gigantic special section in The Kansas City Star crammed full of positive reporting and hopeful predictions about the […]
Posted inFiction, Reading List
Tell Me A Story: A Reading List
These four fantastic fiction pieces will take you far away from this perpetual winter. 1. “Lost in Transit.” (Leon, The Swan Children Magazine, March 2014) This story is a beautiful, haunting example of the work produced by the Swan Children, a collective of artists expressing their experiences under “homeschooled, Quiverfull, and conservative Christian upbringing.” The […]
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A Longreads Guest Pick: Drew Grossman on 'Game of Tribes'
Drew Grossman is a writer living in Washington, D.C. His work has appeared on MensHealth.com, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Miami Herald, and his hometown paper, The Tallahassee Democrat. My Longreads pick this week is Diane Roberts’s ‘Game of Tribes’ for The Oxford American. The piece is an excerpt from a longer project, a book on […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Last, Disposable Action Hero
Hollywood studios are increasingly focusing on creating expensive action movies with less costly unknown actors. For some of these unknowns, it’s a chance to skyrocket into fame, but it’s not that easy: Hollywood has gotten creative in its hunt for the next big action star. Producers have considered scouting high-school football games. Brett Norensberg, an […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Eagle Has Landed
The behind-the-scenes story of how NFL prospect Michael Sam came out: The plan was set. The story would break right after the NFL Combine simultaneously on ESPN, The New York Times and Outsports. There might be a couple interviews after that, but otherwise Sam would focus on football. The timing, however, would quickly change. Even […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Big Book of Black Quarterbacks
A comprehensive history of every black quarterback to play in the NFL, dating back to 1920: More than a compilation of names, this was an opportunity to find and publish these men’s stories. Some are brief; others are long. We penned longer pieces on the most notable players, like Fritz Pollard, Warren Moon, Steve McNair, […]
Posted inNonfiction
#Nightshift: Excerpts from an Instagram Essay
Jeff Sharlet | Longreads | September 2014 | 12 minutes (2,802 words) 1. Snapshots Dunkin Donuts, West Lebanon, New Hampshire The night shift, for me, is a luxury, the freedom to indulge my insomnia by writing at a Dunkin Donuts, one of the only places up here open at midnight. But lately my insomnia doesn’t […]
