More than 23,000 people have gone missing during Mexico’s drug wars. Every year, their families make a trek to Monterrey seeking answers.
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Borges and $: The Parable of the Literary Master and the Coin
Thirty years ago, the world lost a great literary mind—the Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. Today, Elizabeth Hyde Stevens revisits the financial conditions that produced this life of pure literature, finding unexpected hope in the darkest period of Borges’ forgotten past.
The Plot From Solitary
Four men from rival gangs launch a hunger strike protesting the conditions of solitary confinement: The severity of his isolation meant that as the strike began, Ashker had little idea of what effect it was having or how many other prisoners had decided to join him. It turned out to be the largest coordinated hunger […]
My Dinner With Rasputin
Writing in 1924, Teffi, a Russian writer in exile known for her wit, recalls a series of humorous (but increasingly ominous) encounters with the trusted friend of the last Tsar of Russia.
Life with Mental Illness: A Reading List
Below is a guest reading list by journalist Genna Buck. Buck wrote our recent Longreads Member Pick, “Autistic and Searching for a Home,” published by Montreal’s Maisonneuve magazine.
The Art of Running from the Police
A young man concerned that the police will take him into custody comes to see danger and risk in the mundane doings of everyday life. To survive outside prison, he learns to hesitate when others walk casually forward, to see what others fail to notice, to fear what others trust or take for granted.
Life with Mental Illness: A Reading List
Below is a guest reading list by journalist Genna Buck. Buck wrote our recent Longreads Member Pick, “Autistic and Searching for a Home,” published by Montreal’s Maisonneuve magazine.
Can ‘Mad Maps’ Offer Patients a Way to Take Charge of Their Psychiatric Care?
Like advanced directives for the dying, DuBrul explained, mad maps allow psychiatric patients to outline what they’d like their care to look like in future mental health crises. The logic is: If a person can define health, while healthy, and differentiate health from crisis, that person can shape his or her own care. The maps […]
Longreads Guest Pick: Christine Kim on 'What's Killing Poor White Women?'
Christine Kim is a civil rights advocate studying at Duke University School of Law. My favorite longread of the week is ‘What’s Killing Poor White Women,’ by Monica Potts, in The American Prospect. Health care is on the national stage. From Obamacare to health care costs to new state-run health exchanges, it seems that each […]
Riders on the Storm
An examination of Colorado’s mental health care system after the Aurora theater shooting. The state passed a $25 million initiative to restructure its crisis system for mentally ill patients, but still has a lot of work to do: Colorado has underfunded mental health care for decades. Exactly how much is uncertain because there are at […]
