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New York Magazine's Ben Williams: My Top Longreads of 2011

Ben Williams is the online editorial director at New York Magazine.

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1. Celebrity profiles are the hardest genre to make fresh. So props to GQ for doing it not once but three times, with Jessica Pressler on Channing Tatum, Edith Zimmerman on Chris Evans, and Will Leitch on Michael Vick. With Pressler and Zimmerman, what’s great is the willingness of both subject and writer to play, and the dynamic between them—these pieces exploit the “profile as date” subtext really well. It’s fun to think about them as a sort of inverse to Jennifer Egan’s brilliant satire of the profile biz in A Visit From the Goon Squad.  In the Vick piece, what I like is the way that Leitch uses the PR apparatus around the process of profiling Michael Vick to reveal what’s at stake for him. He didn’t get much time with Vick, just a photo shoot and a phone call, but he used it to both explain and complicate the Michael Vick Story that the quarterback’s handlers want to tell. 

2. There are a bunch of New Yorker stories I could pick—Ryan Lizza’s “leading from behind” piece on Obama’s foreign policy was so influential; Jane Mayer on Thomas Drake and state secrets was fascinating and moving; Kelefah Sanneh not only wrote a great analysis of Odd Future, he tracked down their missing member; David Grann is David Grann—but my favorite was Jeffrey Toobin’s take on Clarence Thomas. There are so many things going on here: It’s a revisionist view that frames Thomas as very smart and canny; it shows how one justice can move the entire Supreme Court over decades through the way opinions are written; it sets the stage for next year’s healthcare ruling as a culmination of Thomas’s entire mission; and it makes clear once again just what a strange, extremist man he is.

3. Overall, my favorite thing in the new New York Times Magazine is probably the Riffs section—it identified a gap in the preview-and-review saturated culture journalism market, which is (relatively) long form argument/idea-driven pieces. To pick a few highlights: Dan Kois’s piece on avant-garde movies kicked off a fierce, endless, at times kind of ridiculous debate that just about every movie critic had to weigh in on; Adam Sternbergh’s piece on jokeless comedies defined an era; Sam Anderson on Derek Jeter both mocked empty sports hagiography and read like a hilarious version of Donald Barthelme. Alternate winner in this category is the New York Review of Books, which published some of the best cultural essays this year—Daniel Mendelsohn on Mad Men and Spiderman, Lorrie Moore on Friday Night Lights, and Dan Chiasson on Keith Richards were all delightful and provocative.

4. I just loved Paul Ford’s “The Web is a Customer Service Medium.” It’s the kind of piece that would be hard to get into a print magazine for various reasons, but it resonated instantly online. It’s a pretty abstract argument about a subject that’s not exactly under-analyzed—what is web content about, and how is it different from other forms of content?—but it opens by coining a phrase which instantly makes sense to anyone who works on the web: “Why wasn’t I consulted?” And then it goes on to make a very detailed, specific, convincing, and non-buzzword-filled argument that isn’t formulated expressly to piss off anyone who works in “old media,” which is refreshing.

5. Finally, some favorites in the emerging multimedia genre of longform tweeting. I probably read more words on Twitter than anywhere else this year, and I am grateful for the stamina of those who somehow manage to tweet and retweet extended thoughts all day, every day on specific themes. I learned as much about the Arab Spring by dipping into @acarvin’s feed as from any essays about it. @daveweigel is constantly insightful, and one of the few people capable of being funny about politics. Following @questlove’s stream is like listening to the world’s kindest, most passionate music geek.

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A Moleskine In Every Satchel, and a Board Game On Every Table

Photo by thebarrowboy, (CC BY 2.0).

In the New York Review of Books, Bill McKibben uses his review of David Sax’s new book, The Revenge of Analog to meditate on the enduring joy — and human necessity — of playing board games or writing things with paper and pen.

But back up far enough and many things our species does are silly. The premise of the digital world is that we can do all these silly things…faster and more easily. But why exactly would we want to? Why should efficiency be the standard measure, and not pleasure? I defy you to read Sax’s book without wanting to buy a Moleskine, put an LP record on a turntable, or play a game of Scrabble with your friends. It’s true that he mostly ignores some of the deepest questions raised by the digital age: the obsolescence of human labor against the tide of automation; the endless, uncheckable spread of surveillance. But the small rebellions he chronicles help us understand the general shape of a threat that goes beyond Karl Marx and his nineteenth-century complaints about capitalism; it’s in our digital era that all that was solid really did melt into air. Or into Wi-Fi, anyway.

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‘Nobody Is Safe’: A Dispatch from Manila

At The New York Review of Books, James Fenton reports from the night shift in Manila, giving us a glimpse into the war on drugs in the Philippines, from “buy-bust” undercover operations to EJKs (extrajudicial killings).

An EJK I covered went like this. It was the middle of the night and the family was asleep. Masked men barged in. “Where is Fernando?” said an intruder. A woman answered: “There’s no one called Fernando here.” At this point, an eight-year-old girl woke up her father, Ernesto. As he awoke, Ernesto said, “Oh.” He was shot immediately in the middle of the forehead. The intruders escaped.

They nearly always escape. At one such scene in the north of Manila, a man had been shot in a warren of a building, where the passageway was almost too narrow for two people to pass. And there was only one exit, a set of awkwardly constructed steps. I was examining these steps and thinking what confidence it showed on the part of the killers, to choose a place that was so difficult to get out of, for their planned murder. Then I was told what the neighbors had said. They had said: When the shooting began, we all closed our doors.

Of course you would. You would close your doors and wait. And the killers would know you were going to do that. And when we say “doors” here, you mustn’t imagine anything more than an old piece of repurposed plywood, ill-fitting, no doubt. One such front door, in another poor home, had a gap on either side, through which the killer was able to fire into the house. The second shot found its intended victim. The first shot killed his six-year-old son.

You open your eyes. Your son is dead. Then you’re dead next. This is an EJK.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo by internaz

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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.

* * *

Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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.

* * *

Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

ALSIP, ILLINOIS - MARCH 22: A faded photograph is attached to the headstone that marks the gravesite of Emmett Till in Burr Oak Cemetery on March 22, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

This week, we’re sharing stories from Wright Thompson, Fred Kaplan, Tori Marlan, Casey Gerald, and Sarah Everts.

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1. The Barn

Wright Thompson | The Atlantic | July 22, 2021 | 7,350 words

“In 1955, just past daybreak, a Chevrolet truck pulled up to an unmarked building. A 14-year-old child was in the back. Hi name was Emmett Till.”

2. Why Did We Invade Iraq?

Fred Kaplan | New York Review of Books | July 1, 2021 | 3,828

“The most complete account we are likely to get of the deceptions and duplicities that led to war leaves some crucial mysteries unsolved.”

3. Penniless: Why a Victoria Man Has Gone Two Decades Without Money

Tori Marlan| Capital Daily | July 14, 2021 | 6,687 words

“His last purchases—beer, cigarettes, pot—occurred 18 years ago, he says, on his 31st birthday. He claims he hasn’t spent any money since. It’s true, his friends have told me. No money at all.”

4. Leon Bridges After Dark

Casey Gerald | Texas Monthly | July 19, 2020 | 10,772 words

“On the eve of his third album release, the Grammy-winning artist talks with unparalleled candor about the toll of stardom—and how his best friends saved his life.”

5. Smell You Later: The Weird Science of How Sweat Attracts

Sarah Everts | The Walrus | July 14, 2021 | 4,999 words

“It’s strong reactions like mine to jar fifteen that rouse belief in human sex pheromones, odorous chemicals that catalyze copulation. Insects have them, amphibians have them, mammals have them, so why wouldn’t we?”

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Black-crowned Night Heron perched against clear blue sky, Long Island, New York (Getty Images)

This week, we’re sharing stories from Lyle C. May, Samuel Braslow, Lindsey Hilsum, Megan Mayhew Bergman, and Anand Menon.

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1. Qualified Immunity: How ‘Ordinary Police Work’ Tramples Civil Rights

Lyle C. May | Scalawag Magazine | June 23, 2021 | 2,807 words

“There is little to no accountability behind the closed doors of police work.”

2. Boxer Patricio Manuel, a Transgender Pioneer, Is Still Looking for His Next Fight

Samuel Braslow | ESPN | June 22, 2021 | 6,489

“Manuel sees sports as the latest front in a culture war that fought — and lost — previous battles over same-sex marriage and trans bathroom bills.”

3. More Than Accomplices

Lindsey Hilsum | New York Review of Books | June 10, 2021 | 3,864 words

“How do we determine the agency of female participants in genocidal regimes, where male supremacy often goes hand in hand with ethnic chauvinism?”

4. Seeking Home Aboard the Night Heron

Megan Mayhew Bergman | Audubon | April 23, 2021 | 2,071 words

“The pandemic prodded me to fulfill a lifelong dream of living on a boat. I’m learning the ropes surrounded by the birds of my North Carolina childhood.”

5. The Missing Note

Anand Menon | Tortoise Media | June 2, 2021 | 4,500 words

“Losing family is like losing your sense of social gravity…. Losing four of them almost at once was correspondingly more unsettling, more destabilizing, and subverted my notions as to who I was.”

What Happened to Milad? A Palestinian Father Searches for His Son.

Mariano Sayno / husayno.com

On a wet, gray February day in 2012, Abed Salama was plunged into every parent’s worst nightmare. His son Milad had left for kindergarten early that morning, carrying an orange drink, a sleeve of Pringles, and a chocolate Kinder Egg — special treats for a class picnic. When Abed got word that there had been an accident involving one of the school buses carrying Milad’s class, he panicked. Getting to the scene required navigating sluggish traffic, past high walls and fences, then running on foot when soldiers wouldn’t let his vehicle go any farther; he asked for a ride in a military jeep but was refused. Getting answers about Milad — where was he? was he alive? — was even more punishing. Abed didn’t have the right information, the right papers, the right ethnicity. He is Palestinian, and in his world, as writer Nathan Thrall details in an astonishing feat of reporting for the New York Review of Books, every parent’s worst nightmare is compounded by Israel’s decades-long efforts to make Palestinian lives all but unlivable:

For over half a century, Israel’s strategic dilemma has been its inability to erase the Palestinians, on one hand, and its unwillingness to grant them civil and political rights, on the other. Explaining his opposition to giving Palestinians in the West Bank the same rights as Palestinian citizens of Israel, [former foreign minister] Abba Eban said that there was a limit to the amount of arsenic the human body could absorb. Between the two poles of mass expulsion and political inclusion, the unhappy compromise Israel found was to fragment the Palestinian population, ensuring that its scattered pieces could not organize as one national collective.

Administratively, fragmentation was implemented by imposing varying restrictions, decrees, or laws on Palestinian residents of the different sub-units Israel defined for them: Gaza; the West Bank; East Jerusalem; Israel within the Green Line; and refugees outside the state. Nowhere were Palestinians granted rights equal to those of Jews. Physically, fragmentation was achieved through the establishment of Israeli settlements and their surrounding roads, national parks, archaeological sites, and closed military zones, which left Palestinian communities isolated from one another and surrounded by fences, walls, checkpoints, closed gates, roadblocks, trenches, and bypass roads.

In the case of the accident, fragmentation meant that no one placed a call for assistance until 19 minutes after the school bus collided with a tractor trailer, flipped over, and burst into flames. Israeli emergency services were just a minute and a half away — a military checkpoint was even closer — so onlookers assumed help was coming, but it wasn’t. A video shot at the scene shows a tragedy unfolding in real time:

Men rush forward with small fire extinguishers taken from their cars. Others bring plastic bottles, helplessly pouring them onto the blaze. The flames continue to grow. A man paces desperately in a circle, gripping his face with both hands. Another hits himself on the head. A third, his small fire extinguisher emptied, storms away from the bus, yelling, “Where are you people?! Dear God!” as he raises the extinguisher over his head and slams it to the ground. A small blackened corpse lies on its back in the middle of the road. “Cover him, cover him,” one man tells another. “Where are the ambulances?!” someone else yells. “Where are the Jews?”

Fragmentation also meant that, in the aftermath of the crash, which ultimately claimed several lives and left many children injured, it wasn’t possible to hold Israeli institutions accountable. “Left unsaid,” Thrall writes, “were criticisms of the policies the parents and politicians alike were powerless to change.” Abed would eventually learn what happened to his son, but not from Milad himself. The little boy died, and his body was so badly burned that a DNA test was required to identify him:

Several years after the accident, when Abed was working as a taxi driver, he gave a ride to a mother and her children traveling from Ramallah to their home in the Shuafat Refugee Camp. As they approached the accident site on Jaba road, Abed whispered the Fatiha, the opening prayer of the Quran. From the back seat the mother said, “May God protect them.” Abed was surprised. “You know about the accident?” he asked. She said that her son, sitting beside her in the taxi, was among the students on the bus that day. Abed insisted that the family come home with him for lunch right then. They passed Milad’s school, where, on the anniversary of the crash, Abed would bring Kinder Eggs to the students in Milad’s old classroom, and stopped at a store, where Abed bought a toy for Milad’s former schoolmate. At his home, Abed worked up the courage to ask the boy if he remembered anything about Milad that day. The boy said he did: “Milad was in the front of the bus. He was scared, and he crawled under his seat.”

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

(Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

This week, we’re sharing stories from Nathan Thrall, H. Claire Brown, Alexander Chee, Jean Garnett, and Erica Lenti.

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1. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

Nathan Thrall | New York Review of Books | March 19, 2021 | 20,500 words

“One man’s quest to find his son lays bare the reality of Palestinian life under Israeli rule.”

2. How Corporations Buy—and Sell—Food Made with Prison Labor

H. Claire Brown | The Counter | May 18, 2021 | 3,810

“The notion of work as punishment has enabled prison administrators to compel incarcerated people to work on farms and in dairies for low or no pay and without basic labor protections, sometimes in service of secretive billionaires they’ll never meet.”

3. What My Korean Father Taught Me About Defending Myself in America

Alexander Chee | GQ | May 14, 2021 | 3,680 words

“And he said something I would never forget. ‘The best fighter in tae kwon do never fights,’ he said. ‘He always finds another way.”

4. There I Almost Am

Jean Garnett | The Yale Review | May 19, 2021 | 4,933 words

“I can be a very generous sister—maternal, even—as long as I am winning.” Jean Garnett writes about envy and being a twin.

5. My Quest to Make My Dog Internet Famous

Erica Lenti | The Walrus | May 17, 2021 | 2,138 words

“When I spoke with several people behind some of Canada’s most influential dogs, agents and managers for pet influencers, and even researchers on canine-influencer culture, I began to understand. Whether they’re couch potatoes partnering with your favourite snack-food company or high-falutin divas posing beside expensive cars and decked out in the latest couture, pet celebrities have one thing in common: they are symbols of inspiration. Even if Belle was a dog, she needed to portray a life that could be. To be famous, she’d have to convince others she was already living the carefree millennial dream.”