For four years now, the Longreads community has celebrated the best storytelling on the web. Thanks for all of your contributions, and special thanks to Longreads Members for supporting this service. We couldn’t keep going without your funding, so join us today. Earlier this week we posted every No. 1 story from our weekly email […]
Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie Stephen Rodrick | New York Times Magazine | January 2013 | 31 minutes (7,752 words) Stephen Rodrick (@stephenrodrick) is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, contributing editor for Men’s Journal and author of The Magical Stranger.
Ryan Leaf’s Jailhouse Confessions, Written By His Cell Mate John Cagney Nash | Playboy | September 2013 | 19 minutes (4,710 words) Flinder Boyd (@FlinderBoyd) is a journalist for SB Nation, Sports on Earth, and the BBC among others. Athletes and sports writers usually come from two completely different professional worlds and as a […]
The Match Maker Don Van Natta Jr. | ESPN | August 2013 | 34 minutes (8,461 words) Don Van Natta Jr. (@DVNJr) is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. My story, The Match Maker, was online at ESPN.com only a few hours on Aug. 25 when I heard from a California […]
Is John Lindsay Too Tall To Be Mayor? Jimmy Breslin | New York magazine | July 28, 1969 Mark Lotto (@marklotto) is a senior editor at Medium, and a former editor at GQ and The New York Times Op-Ed page. In the month since I happened upon Jimmy Breslin’s story about the 1969 New […]
Facebook Feminism: Like It Or Not Susan Faludi | The Baffler | October 2013 | 36 minutes (9,021 words) Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) teaches media studies and writes Scandals of Classic Hollywood for The Hairpin, amongst other things. This essay is incendiary and incisive and just didn’t get the play it deserved: maybe because […]
Roads & Kingdoms David Weiner (@daweiner) is creative and editorial director at Digg. Roads & Kingdoms makes me feel bad about myself in the best possible way. Ostensibly a travel and food site, Roads & Kingdoms is more like a revolver of adventure—each story a bullet that enlightens and inspires, educates and informs. Through them, […]
Above: Doris Duke The Poorest Rich Kids in the World Sabrina Rubin Erdely | Rolling Stone | August 2013 | 38 minutes (9,653 words) Sabrina Rubin Erdely (@sabrinarerdely) is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. I often deal with interview subjects who tell variations of the truth. People don’t usually out-and-out lie, although that […]
Aileen Gallagher (@aegallagher) teaches magazine journalism at Syracuse University and is a contributing editor to College @Longreads. “The way it worked was that they joined the Army because they were starry-eyed or heartbroken or maybe just out of work, and then they were assigned to be in the infantry rather than to something with better […]
In Conversation: Robert Silvers Mark Danner | New York magazine | April 2013 | 28 minutes (7,063 words) Nicholas Jackson is the digital director at Pacific Standard, and a former digital editor at Outside and The Atlantic. These year-end lists tend to be like the Academy Awards in that only work released during the […]
Jahar’s World Janet Reitman | Rolling Stone | July 2013 | 45 minutes (11,415 words) Janet Reitman is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone. I was completely unprepared for the response to “Jahar’s World,” which was published in mid-July as a Rolling Stone cover story. The piece tells the story of accused Boston bombing suspect […]
The Weeklies Monica Potts | The American Prospect | March 2013 | 29 minutes (7,360 words) Monica Potts is a senior writer for The American Prospect. I did the reporting for ‘The Weeklies,’ about homeless families living in a suburban hotel outside of Denver, Colorado, a year ago. I lived with in the Ramada Inn […]
A Pianist’s A-V Alfred Brendel | New York Review of Books | July 2013 | 17 minutes (4,233 words) *** Robert Cottrell is editor of The Browser. The best writers about classical music are professional musicians: think of Jeremy Denk, Stephen Hough, Nico Muhly. (The exception that disproves the rule is Alex Ross.) Charles Rosen, […]
Taken Sarah Stillman | The New Yorker | August 2013 | 45 minutes (11,405 words) Raphael Pope-Sussman (@AudacityofPope) is the managing editor of News Genius and a founding co-editor of BKLYNR. Sarah Stillman’s story describes the use of civil forfeiture, a process by which the state can confiscate individuals’ assets with no due process. I […]
Jason Fagone (@jfagone) is the author of Ingenious, a book about modern-day inventors; his stories this year appeared in Wired, Philadelphia, Grantland, Men’s Journal, and NewYorker.com. Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie Stephen Rodrick | The New York Times Magazine | January 2013 | 31 minutes (7,752 words) Steve […]
Catherine Cloutier is an online producer at The Boston Globe’s Boston.com. “Life, Feinberg says, guarantees misfortune. The wolf is always at the door.” James Oliphant’s profile of Ken Feinberg in the National Journal transformed the way I view our nation’s response to tragedy. The monetary value of a life lost to violence is rarely equal. […]
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a writer and an editor. Taxes aren’t boring—they’re just supremely difficult to write about in a compelling way. These three stories stand out because they illustrate the far-reaching consequences of different countries’ tax policies through a few very influential people: 1. “Marty Sullivan figured out how the world’s biggest companies avoided […]
Above: Thomas “TJ” Webster Jr. *** Ross Andersen is a Senior Editor at Aeon Magazine. He has written extensively about science and philosophy for several publications, including The Atlantic and The Economist. “Flinder Boyd’s piece about an aspirational streetballer and his cross-country trip to New York’s legendary Rucker Park had me from the very first […]
Elizabeth Hyde Stevens is author of the book Make Art Make Money: Lessons from Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career. “I was shocked that Todd VanDerWerff was able to write such a serious essay about the show DuckTales. As a kid, I saw every episode, and didn’t think much about why it was good, […]
Every week, Longreads sends out an email with our Top 5 story picks—so here it is, every single story that was chosen as No. 1 this year. If you like these, you can sign up to receive our free Top 5 email every Friday. Happy holidays!
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