This week’s Longreads Member Pick is by David Kushner, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone whose work has been featured on Longreads often in the past. He has just published The Bones of Marianna, a new story from The Atavist, and we’re thrilled to give the ebook to Longreads Members. Kushner explains: Almost everyone who hears the shocking story […]
Search results
Posted inEditor's Pick
Longreads Member Exclusive: Baghdad Follies, by Janet Reitman
This week, we’re excited to feature Janet Reitman, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and the author of Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion. “Baghdad Follies” is Reitman’s 2004 story on what it was like to be a war correspondent in Iraq. As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the war, Reitman reflects on her […]
Posted inFeature
A Brief History of Class and Waste in India
“This is the man who transformed teenage rebellion into a toilet revolution.”
Posted inFiction, Reading List
Reading List: 6 Great Sci-Fi Stories About Robots
Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She recently shared six stories for the science-fiction newbie, and a reading list for Fantasy Newbies. These stories offer a little breadth, a little curiosity, and a little levity to the idea of artificial life.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Feel Of Nothing: A Life In America’s Batting Cages
Steve Salerno | Missouri Review | Winter 2004| 24 minutes (6,016 words) Steve Salerno’s essays and memoirs have appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, Esquire and many other publications. His 2005 book, SHAM, was a groundbreaking deconstruction of the self-help movement, and he is working on a similar book about medicine. He teaches globalization and […]
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The End of the Line: A Microbus Map of Damascus
Matthew McNaught | Syria Comment | June 2013 | 18 minutes (4,615 words) Matthew McNaught taught English in Syria between 2007 and 2009. He now works in mental health and sometimes writes essays and stories. This piece first appeared in Syria Comment, and our thanks to McNaught for allowing us to republish it here. 1. Here is a […]
Posted inFiction, Reading List
Reading List: 6 Great Sci-Fi Stories About Robots
Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She recently shared six stories for the science-fiction newbie, and a reading list for Fantasy Newbies. These stories offer a little breadth, a little curiosity, and a little levity to the idea of artificial life.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Courage and Survival
The Legends of the Fall author and poet on aging: “Obviously I need courage to deal with my current dysfunctional body. And religion? The bible says that the kingdom of God is within you. If so, I haven’t noticed it lately. I’m not making light of devotion or a mother praying to bring her baby […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
How My Mother Disappeared
Adapted from Witchel’s forthcoming memoir All Gone. A daughter adjusts after her mother develops stroke-related dementia: “Mom faced me. ‘I want you to kill me,’ she said solemnly. For decades, she insisted that if she was mentally compromised in any way, her children were to pull the plug. But the situations we’d imagined never included […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Fresno
A history of sprawl and escape routes in a Central California town, from the perspective of one family searching for its own escape: “As I started high school my mom became convinced my dad had ruined her life. They’d married quickly, and for superficial reasons. Two immigrants from the same country, raised in the manacles […]
