How the songwriter’s abandoned third album became two albums.
Search results
Character Work
Alison Fields remembers the perils of junior high: fitting in, standing out, and trying out.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from C.J. Chivers, Sheelah Kolhatkar, Libby Copeland, Amanda Petrusich, and Bryan Menegus.
How Do You Make a TV Show Set in the West Bank?
What the thriller “Fauda” reveals about what Israelis will watch—and what they won’t.
Notes from a Baby-Names Obsessive
Names channel our identity — or at least our parents’ idea of our future identity — in ways both big (class, ethnicity) and small (subcultural affiliations, self-awareness). When the mother’s American and the father’s French, things get complicated, fast.
Bowie Knives, Concealed Rifles, and Caning Charles Sumner
As the Civil War loomed, weapons — like the recently invented bowie knife and rifles that were shipped to Kansas hidden in crates labeled as bibles — became complex political symbols.
‘Archive, Archive, Archive’: Valeria Luiselli on Reading In Order To Write
To write “Lost Children Archive,” Valeria Luiselli studied the refugee crisis “obliquely,” reading about other historical moments of children’s mass displacement, amassing a reader’s archive of loss.
Stacey Abrams’ Historic Win in Georgia: A Reading List
Stacey Abrams’ win in Georgia could put one of the U.S.’s most populous red states in play for progressives for the first time in decades.
Series Exhumes Out-of-Print Books by Black Authors
“The Blackist,” a column for Catapult’s magazine, introduces audiences to out-of-print novels written by black authors.
The Anarchists Who Took the Commuter Train
The Stelton colony, initially associated with the likes of Emma Goldman and Eugene O’Neill, was a radical suburb whose anarchist residents took the commuter train to New York.

