“You have to carry your truth into reality.”
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The Life and Murder of Stella Walsh, Intersex Olympic Champion
Eighty years ago, in Berlin, Stella Walsh won her second Olympic medal. Decades later, Walsh’s murder and subsequent autopsy threw the legacy of track’s first female superstar into turmoil.
Good Kids, Bad City
Ricky Jackson and the Bridgeman brothers were convicted of murder based on the coerced testimony of a 12-year old. This is the story of their exoneration after 39 years of wrongful incarceration.
The Disgrace of Our Criminal Justice
Cole examines three books that highlight what is wrong with America’s justice system, and why incarceration rates are so high.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week, featuring, The New York Review of Books, ProPublica, Texas Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, and Adult Magazine.
'Solzhenitsyn Was My Virgil'
I read far and wide during my ten-year bit. I read all of the longest works of the world, the thousands of pages of Proust and Musil and Joyce and Tolstoy and David Foster Wallace. And I could follow whatever interested me at the time. I acquired a taste for Sir Richard Burton’s 19th century […]
Longreads Best of 2014: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year
All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2014. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email. If you like these, you can sign up to receive our free weekly email every Friday. * * * I Smoked Pot with […]
For the Public Good: The Shameful History of Forced Sterilization in the U.S.
“I never figured out why they did that to me.”

