“Using chemistry, archival records and AI, scientists are reviving the aromas of old libraries, mummies and battlefields.”
archives
Posted inEditor's Pick
Century-Scale Storage
“If you had to store something for 100 years, how would you do it?”
Posted inFeature
A Year in Reading: The Dark Side of Progress
We’re moving farther, faster, than ever before. But we’re also destabilizing crucial areas of human experience.
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Controversial Rare-Book Dealer Tries to Rewrite His Own Ending
“Glenn Horowitz built a fortune selling the archives of writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Alice Walker. Then a rock star pressed charges.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Race to Save our Online Lives from a Digital Dark Age
“We’re making more data than ever. What can—and should—we save for future generations? And will they be able to understand it?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Sure, It Won an Oscar. But Is It Criterion?
“How the Criterion Collection became the film world’s arbiter of taste.”
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week’s edition highlights stories by Megan Greenwell, Kerry Howley, Jeremy B. Jones, Marian Bull, and Ava Kofman.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Getting Lost in the World’s Largest Stack of Menus
“Menus provide a window into history, a vital connection to our foodways.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Haunting the Archive
“The media’s obsession with my mother changed my relationship to grief.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How a California Archive Reconnected a New Mexico Family with Its Chinese Roots
Amid a surge of anti-Asian hate in America, Aimee Towi Mae Tang, a fourth-generation Chinese New Mexican, wanted to know more about of her own identity and how her family settled in Albuquerque. Born in China and new to Albuquerque himself, journalist Wufei Yu decided to help the Tangs learn more about their history, and […]