Time for flip-flops, sunscreen, and, of course, summer reading.
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Percy Ross Wants to Give You Money!
He was was a self-made, blue-collar millionaire in Reagan’s America. But when Percy Ross decided to give away his fortune, he made things simple: all you had to do was ask for it.
Writing Our America
“Despite the headlines that came after the election calling this country ‘Trump’s America’—and there were many—I won’t call it that, or see it that way. And regardless of your politics I’ll ask you to join me. This is our America. It’s our America to write in, and our America to write.”
The Great American Housewife Writer: A Shirley Jackson Primer
“Her storytelling is incredibly modern. She is a writer to read right now.”
The Family That Would Not Live
What can haunted houses and their history tell us about American history and culture? Writer Colin Dickey sets out across America to investigate America’s haunted spaces in order to uncover what their ghost stories say about who we were, are, and will be.
On Graywolf Press and the Lyric Essay
Over at New York magazine, Boris Kachka has a piece looking at how the tiny, Minnesota-based Graywolf Press became a major player in book publishing. As the publisher of books like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts (read the first chapter here!) and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, Graywolf Press has helped turn “the previously unprepossessing genre of the ‘lyric essay’ into a major […]
Late in Life, Thoreau Became a Serious Darwinist
But he died before he could finish his book on natural history. As Emerson put it, Thoreau “depart[ed] out of Nature before… he has been really shown to his peers for what he is.”
The Immigration-Obsessed, Polarized, Garbage-Fire Election of 1800
A madman versus a crook? Unexpected twists? Fake news? Welcome to the election of 1800.
A Reading List for the Start of Summer
Time for flip-flops, sunscreen, and, of course, summer reading.
Longreads Best of 2016: Essays & Criticism
We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here, the best in essays and criticism.
