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 […]
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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 […]
How a Convicted Murderer Prepares for a Job Interview
“In prison Angel thought that it wouldn’t be too hard to find a job once he got out. He believed he had come a long way.”
‘Quebrado’: The Life and Death of a Young Activist
“If you survive me, tell them this: I never gave up.”
The Missing History of Ravensbrück, The Nazi Concentration Camp for Women
The story of the Nazis’ only concentration camp for women has long been obscured—partly by chance, but also by historians’ apathy towards women’s history. Sarah Helm writes about the camp, where the “cream of Europe’s women” were interned alongside its prostitutes, and members of the French resistance perished alongside Red Army prisoners of war.
After Water
The illustrated story of California, and what happens when the water runs out.
The Dolphin Trainer Who Loved Dolphins Too Much
Dolphin trainer Ashley Guidry loved her job and the animals she worked with—in particular, a dolphin calf named Chopper. But years of seeing how business was done behind the scenes at a small marine park made her come to the painful conclusion that she had to walk away from it all.
Giving Visibility to the Invisible: An Interview With Photographer Ruddy Roye
“I want to introduce white America to people who they might never have met, and I want them to fall in love too.”
How a Great American Theatrical Family Produced the 19th Century’s Most Notorious Assassin
The celebrated tragedians of the Booth family let Shakespeare’s themes seep into their own relationships. Hubris, glory, the legacy of a dead father, brotherly rivalry, and a powerful delusion led the family—and the nation—to catastrophe.
A Meditation on Pain
“Once, when the pain came, I grabbed for a knife, my fist tight around it, contemplating digging out my right eye. I was twenty-one.”
