‘The Underland Is a Deeply Human Realm’: Getting Down with Robert Macfarlane By Tobias Carroll Feature “I thought the underland would be — of all the landscape forms that have drawn me to explore them — the most uninhabited. This proved wildly incorrect.”
‘Brokenness and Holiness Really Go Together’: Darcey Steinke on Menopause By Jane Ratcliffe Feature Darcey Steinke says that most menopause memoirs “end with this come-to-Jesus moment of, ‘Then I accepted hormones.’ I’m not against it, but … I wanted to hear what it’s like for other women.”
Time To Kill the Rabbit? By Lily Meyer Feature In two new novels, the bunnies are anything but cute. (Unless … you use magic to turn one of them into a pre-TB Keats, or a talky Tim Riggins.)
We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Very Beginning By Longreads Feature Early electric cars performed better in cities than internal combustion vehicles, but didn’t give riders the same illusion of freedom and masculine derring-do.
‘They Happen To Be Our Neighbors Across the Span of a Century, But They’re Our Neighbors.’ By Adam Morgan Feature One hundred summers ago, black Chicagoans were terrorized by whites during the Red Summer. Poet Eve Ewing talks about reaching out to her neighbors across time in “1919.”
‘If Any of My Old Friends Are Reading This, It Is Okay Out Here.’ By Jacqueline Alnes Feature Amber Scorah talks about committing the one unforgiveable sin: believing, then not believing.
How the Cosby Story Finally Went Viral — And Why It Took So Long By Longreads Feature A journalist who reported on the accusations long before they went viral wonders, “What kind of profession am I in, where stories have no logical reason for unfolding?”
Kristen Arnett on Taxidermy, Memory, and “Mostly Dead Things” By Tobias Carroll Feature “What’s considered high art? What’s lowbrow? What are those things? That’s something that, as a person who like, lives at 7-Eleven, I’m extremely interested in.”
I’ve Done a Lot of Forgetting By Jordan Michael Smith Feature When I was a kid, I wanted my antisemitic tormentors to accept me. I wanted to be their friend.
America Is Still Hard To Find By Lily Meyer Feature Kathleen Alcott’s latest novel is a dramatic reenactment of the ethical dilemmas posed in antiwar activist Father Daniel Berrigan’s ’60s manifesto.
Total Depravity: The Origins of the Drug Epidemic in Appalachia Laid Bare By Longreads Feature In an excerpt from his essay collection, Australian journalist Richard Cooke reports on the American opioid crisis through the astonished eyes of a foreigner visiting steel and coal country.
Odetta Holmes’ Album One Grain of Sand By Longreads Feature The singular singer released her groundbreaking album in 1963, the same year as the March on Washington, and used her art and appearance as weapons in the Civil Rights struggle.
Reimagining Harper Lee’s Lost True Crime Novel: An Interview with Casey Cep By Adam Morgan Feature “Somewhere along the way it became very clear to me that I was writing the book she never would.”
There Is No Other Way To Say This By Melissa Batchelor Warnke Feature “Tell them on the outside,” Carolyn Forché’s Salvadoran mentor instructed her. Her memoir is her latest attempt. Its elliptical lyricism, like that of her poetry, runs circles around censorship.
This Month In Books: ‘What Creates That Need To Leap?’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter has one foot out the door.
Technology Is as Biased as Its Makers By Longreads Feature From exploding Ford Pintos to racist algorithms, all harmful technologies are a product of unethical design. Yet, like car companies in the ’70s, today’s tech companies would rather blame the user.
High Expectations: LSD, T.C. Boyle’s Women, and Me By Christine Ro Feature “Outside Looking In” dramatizes the discovery of LSD and the cult of personality surrounding Timothy Leary. Our reviewer drops acid and thinks about how, for women, it can be safer to be a downer.
I Entered the World’s Longest, Loneliest Horse Race on a Whim, and I Won By Longreads Feature Somehow, implausibly, against all the odds, I became the youngest person and first woman ever to win the Mongol Derby. What made me so sure I was ready, when I was totally unprepared?
‘The Home Is a Place as Wild as Any in the World.’ By Alex Madison Feature Chia-Chia Lin talks about the wildness of domestic spaces and writing her novel “The Unpassing” through the early months of motherhood.
The Age of Forever Crises By Linda Kinstler Feature We need to learn how to talk about our irreversible mistakes. Historian Kate Brown says the first step is to resist the Chernobylization of knowledge.
The Women Characters Rarely End Up Free: Remembering Rachel Ingalls By Ruby Brunton Feature The recently re-appreciated novelist Rachel Ingalls passed away last month. She was among a cohort of twentieth-century women writers who were ‘famous for not being famous.’
A Dispatch From the Fast-Paced, Makeshift World of High-End Catering By Longreads Feature The unsung heroes of the food world battle against time and chaos, cooking haute cuisine over lit cans of Sterno in the gloomy back hallways of New York’s civic landmarks.
‘Midwesterners Have Seen Themselves As Being in the Center of Everything.’ By Bridey Heing Feature In “The Heartland,” Kristin L. Hoganson says America’s Midwest has been more connected to global events than popular history allows — especially popular history as told in the Midwest.
Lock Your Doors? By Ryan Chapman Feature A new homeowner reads two novels that revolve around surreal home-invasion scenarios, and considers what it is about his house that scares him.
United States of Conspiracy: An Interview with Anna Merlan By Rebecca McCarthy Feature “Most people in America believe in one conspiracy to some extent, but the far end of the pool … is this desire to show that you really do reject all knowable authority.”
This Month In Books: Botanize Your Past To Save the Future By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is overflowing with regional fiction, travel writing … and retro-botany.
The Anarchists Who Took the Commuter Train By Longreads Feature The Stelton colony, initially associated with the likes of Emma Goldman and Eugene O’Neill, was a radical suburb whose anarchist residents took the commuter train to New York.
‘What Is Missing Is Her Soul’: Women and Art, Girls and Men By Alana Mohamed Feature In a new book, Camille Laurens examines the life of the model for Degas’ masterpiece, “Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen.” But there’s still so much we don’t know.
Against Hustle: Jenny Odell Is Taking Her Time at the End of the World By Rebecca McCarthy Feature The attention economy is killing us and the planet. Artist and writer Jenny Odell talks about why slowing down could be the only way to survive.
‘I Don’t Think Those Feelings of Self-Doubt Ever Go Away.’ By Amy Brady Feature Susan Choi talks about feeling unsure of oneself, as a writer, as a performer — or as a victim — and about how her latest novel evolved in uncanny tandem with the real world.
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