Mark Haber discusses “Reinhardt’s Garden” and its protagonist’s quest for a true understanding of melancholy: “not a feeling but a mood, not a color but a shade, not depression but not happiness either…”
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The World’s Tallest Dwarf
Late capitalism gets an antihero show.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Natalie Kitroeff and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Brendan I. Koerner, Eve Peyser, Darius Miles, and Bill Wyman.
Born Again
“Rebirth therapy” was meant to help a troubled girl start over, but it ended her life instead.
On Being an Ill Woman: A Reading List of Doctors’ Dismissal and Disbelief
Eight stories of being ill and being dismissed by the medical establishment.
Hoffnung um jeden Preis
Privatkliniken in Deutschland verkaufen Krebspatienten Hoffnung zu Höchstpreisen — mit durchwachsenem Erfolg.
The Last Resort
Private clinics in Germany sell cancer patients hope — and mixed results — at exorbitant prices. Some, like the Hallwang Clinic, cater primarily to foreigners.
Orwell’s Last Neighborhood
While envisioning the darkest of futures and grappling with mortality, the English writer retreated to an idyllic Scottish isle to write Nineteen Eighty-Four.
High Expectations: LSD, T.C. Boyle’s Women, and Me
“Outside Looking In” dramatizes the discovery of LSD and the cult of personality surrounding Timothy Leary. Our reviewer drops acid and thinks about how, for women, it can be safer to be a downer.
The Science of Dreaming
Science journalist Alice Robb on why we need to take our dreams seriously.

