[W.B. Yeats’s 1919 poem] “The Second Coming” may well be the most thoroughly pillaged piece of literature in English. (Perhaps Macbeth’s famous “sound and fury” monologue is a distant second.) Since Chinua Achebe cribbed Yeats’s lines for Things Fall Apart in 1958 and Joan Didion for Slouching Towards Bethlehem a decade later, dozens if not hundreds of others have followed suit, […]
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Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
The Politics of Poetry
The New York Times’s poetry columnist on the intersection between poetry and politics.
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2015: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year
All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2015. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
I Would Rather Be Herod’s Pig: The History of a Taboo
The story of how pigs became the world’s most divisive meal.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Uncategorized
Jewish Mobsters and Their Mothers
Jewish mothers sacrificed for their children, but they expected something in return. One of their requests was that their sons sei Yidden (be Jews) and maintain a connection with the Jewish community. At least during their mothers’ lifetime, a goodly number of these tough Jewish mobsters obeyed. Detroit mobster Harry Kasser told me in a 1986 conversation that he attended synagogue on the High Holidays solely to please his mother.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Romance, Relationships and Religion: A Reading List
Emily’s picks this weeks includes stories from Jewcy, Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, and Religion News Service.
Posted inReading List
Romance, Relationships and Religion: A Reading List
1. “Breaking Up is Hard to Do – Especially in the Orthodox World.” (Jewcy, Rachel Delia Benaim, July 2014) I recently finished reading Cut Me Loose, Leah Vincent’s memoir of her time in the ultra-Orthodox community, her subsequent shunning and eventual breakout. Benaim, the author of this piece comes from a Modern Orthodox background, but many of the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Science, Chance, and Emotion with Real Cosima
Through her work on clone-thriller Orphan Black, science consultant Cosima Herter has helped open our eyes to the possibilities and perils of synthetic biology and the pursuit of genetic perfection.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Inside Scientology: A Reading List
Alex Gibney’s much-talked about new documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief—based on Lawrence Wright’s similarly titled 2013 exposé—has been making headlines since it made its Sundance debut in January. It opened on limited screens across the country last Friday and will premiere on HBO in two weeks. In the meantime, the Church of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘The Good Is Elusive and Transitory in This World’
Artist and illustrator Maira Kalman on mistakes, optimism, and how art (and dogs) warm the soul.
