Barry Grass | The Normal School | Spring 2014 | 18 minutes (4,537 words) 1st Late in every February, Major League Baseball players report to Spring Training. Every year in Kansas City this is heralded by a gigantic special section in The Kansas City Star crammed full of positive reporting and hopeful predictions about the […]
Search results
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Can an Outsider Ever Truly Become Amish?
One of the rarest religious experiences you can have in America is to join the Plain.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week featuring David Carr, California Sunday, New York Review of Books, New Republic, and ESPN.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
As Bulls Are Bred Meaner, the Riders Start Younger
It wasn’t long before breeders found that they didn’t really need riders to make money… The top bull could earn a quarter of a million dollars at a single event, and as the purses grew so did the sport’s attention to genetics. Ranchers once content to breed any bull that leaped around now turned to […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
David Foster Wallace on the Costs of Becoming a Professional Tennis Player
It’s better for us not to know the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade athlete has made to get so very good at one particular thing. Oh, we’ll invoke lush clichés about the lonely heroism of Olympic athletes, the pain and analgesia of football, the early rising and hours of practice and restricted diets, the preflight […]
Posted inReading List
Longreads Best of 2015: Essays & Criticism
Story picks by Leslie Jamison, Jia Tolentino, Roxane Gay, Tom Scocca, Ann Friedman, Rachel Syme, Francesca Mari, Sari Botton, and Emily Perper.
Posted inNonfiction
Mr. and Mrs. B
When Alexander Chee was a struggling young writer, working as a cater-waiter for William F. and Pat Buckley.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Tony Gwynn: 1960-2014
“The best thing for me has just been the passion of wanting to play. The challenge of stepping in the box, the challenge of trying to be successful. When I started out, I guarantee you nobody figured I would be where I am today. Nobody. Not even myself. Maybe there’s something that makes you want […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
The Story of Vicente, Who Murdered His Mother, His Father, and His Sister
What’s one more crime in the murder capital of the world?
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Curses: A Tribute to Losing Teams and Easy Scapegoats
Barry Grass | The Normal School | Spring 2014 | 18 minutes (4,537 words) 1st Late in every February, Major League Baseball players report to Spring Training. Every year in Kansas City this is heralded by a gigantic special section in The Kansas City Star crammed full of positive reporting and hopeful predictions about the […]
