From the time he was young boy, Mark Hawthorne understood the power of words. His father was a reporter for the Associated Press and his mother was a school teacher. So when Hawthorne landed his dream job and became a reporter for The New York Times, everything seemed to fall into place. Except that it […]
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Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? Part 10: Woodstock ’99
Promoter John Scher insisted instead that the ugliness of Woodstock 99 reflected a larger moral chasm in the souls of the attendees. “I think, in some respects, the generation was irresponsible and they gave me and themselves the finger,” Scher told Spin. He wasn’t the only one who felt that Woodstock 99 amounted to a […]
Rage Against Your Machine: Drivers vs. Cyclists in America
“As a couples therapist, I tell people that we take things so personally,” he says as we near the Whitestone Bridge, on the first dedicated bike path we’ve seen in more than two hours. It’s easy, when a car edges too close or cuts him off, to “go to that paranoid place where they’re just […]
Joan Rivers Always Knew She Was Funny
It’s the rest of the world that sometimes forgot. “Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed. This is the mantra of the pessimist and the persecuted alike, the preemptive strike of those who tend to paint the picture a little blacker than it is. And then there is Joan Rivers, the orneriest creature ever to […]
Hate Man
Hate Man From the time he was young boy, Mark Hawthorne understood the power of words. His father was a reporter for the Associated Press and his mother was a school teacher. So when Hawthorne landed his dream job and became a reporter for The New York Times, everything seemed to fall into place. Except […]
Break All the Way Down
[Fiction] A baby’s arrival stirs up difficult memories: I sat with the baby in the living room, setting her on a clean blanket. When I tired of watching her, I stretched out, resting my hand on her stomach. I fell asleep with the baby staring at me, her eyes wide open. In the morning, my […]
I Was A Teenage Narc
A writer recalls being employed by the Washington State Liquor Control Board as a teenage informant who bought cigarettes and alcohol without an ID: The convenience store was on a suburban street in West Seattle. Kelly parked in the front, in view of the counter, instead of around the corner like she usually did. I […]
Longreads Best of 2012: Emma Carmichael
Emma Carmichael is the managing editor of Gawker. She lives in Brooklyn. The Best Thing I Read About A Woman Who Got Blamed For Everything The Woman Who Took the Fall for JPMorgan Chase, by Susan Dominus (New York Times Magazine) I tend to steer clear of stories about finance because I assume they’ll either […]
‘Quebrado’: The Life and Death of a Young Activist
“If you survive me, tell them this: I never gave up.”
Without Chief or Tribe: An Expat’s Guide to Having a Baby in Saudi Arabia
Nathan Deuel | Friday Was the Bomb | May 2014 | 21 minutes (5,178 words) For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share a full chapter from Friday Was the Bomb, the new book by Nathan Deuel about moving to the Middle East with his wife in 2008. Deuel has been featured on […]
