Sam Kean | The Tale of Dueling Neurosurgeons | 2014 | 12 minutes (3,008 words) For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share a story from The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, a new book from science reporter Sam Kean looking at stories about the brain and the history of neuroscience. Here’s Kean: […]
Search results
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
A Brief History of Disney
Here’s a reading list exploring Disney’s more than 80-year grip on popular culture—the animation, the music, the princesses, and the parents killed off in the First Act.
Posted inReading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Photo: Richard Barnes *** Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. *** 1. No Exit: ‘Your Feeling of Autonomy Is a Fantasy’ Gideon Lewis-Kraus | Wired | April 23, 2014 | 42 minutes […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
This Book Is Now a Pulitzer Prize Winner: An Excerpt from ‘Toms River’ by Dan Fagin
Dan Fagin | Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation | 2013 | 9 minutes (2,153 words) This year’s Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction was awarded yesterday to Dan Fagin, an NYU science journalism professor, for Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation. According to the Pulitzer committee, Fagin’s book, which chronicles the effects of chemical waste […]
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
An Interview With a Therapist Who Was Once Insane
Michael Hobbes | Longreads | March 2014 | 10 minutes (2,425 words) Joe Guppy is a writer, actor and psychotherapist living in Seattle. Thirty-five years ago, he was 23 years old and a mental patient. He spent 10 weeks in a mental hospital and another 10 weeks in a halfway house after Atabrine, an old-school […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
On the Far Side of the Fire: Life, Death and Witchcraft in the Niger Delta
Jessica Wilbanks | Ninth Letter | Fall/Winter 2013 | 27 minutes (6,860 words) Download as a .mobi ebook (Kindle) Download as an .epub ebook (iBooks) One of our previous Longreads Member Picks, an essay by Jessica Wilbanks, is now free for everyone. “On The Far Side of the Fire” first appeared in Ninth Letter and was awarded the journal’s annual creative nonfiction award. This is […]
Posted inNonfiction, Story
How One Magazine Shaped Investigative Journalism in America
The following story comes recommended by Ben Marks, senior editor for Collectors Weekly: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s most recent history, The Bully Pulpit, chronicles the intertwined lives of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, often in excruciating detail, from Roosevelt’s struggles with the bosses of his Republican party to the fungal infections that plagued Taft’s groin. […]
Posted inPodcasts
The Alienation of Norman Rockwell
“[Rockwell’s world] is a place of safety and security, and it’s a place where there can be problems but where problems have solutions and the solutions are often provided by the people who live next door to you; if not the girl next door, then maybe the old man next door, and a doctor will […]
Posted inUncategorized
Since Beating that Left Student in Coma, His Father Has Kept a Constant Vigil
Since Beating that Left Student in Coma, His Father Has Kept a Constant Vigil Ken quit his job running a health club in Loudoun County to care for his only son. Every day, he brushes Ryan’s teeth and bathes him, administers 50 medications, feeds him through a tube attached to his stomach, changes his catheter, […]
Posted inUncategorized
The Worst Case: How the Courts Might Decide On Health Care Reform
The Worst Case: How the Courts Might Decide On Health Care Reform It revolves around a novel philosophical twist: a distinction between activity and inactivity that, repeal advocates say, makes the insurance requirement an illegitimate exercise of federal authority. It’s an arcane legal point, but, suddenly, a consequential one, and not just because of its […]
