Indeed, for a city that only last summer feared it would be overrun by jihadis, Baghdad feels uncannily lacking in trauma. Perhaps Iraqis have learned how to live with their fears, but ISIS feels more threatening in European capitals than it does in Baghdad. Too complacently, Iraqis talk about ISIS in the past tense, as […]
Tag: longreads
The weekly writing assignments—thousand-word limit, a safeguard for Bill’s sanity—required us to try our hands at a wide range of forms: humor, interviewing, travel, science, sports, criticism, editorials. This regimen inevitably yielded the occasional face-first failure, soon to be transmuted by pedagogical alchemy into an edifying failure. At the end of class, Bill would return […]
There is a lesson in the past fifty years of litigation. When the fight for equal rights for women narrowed to a fight for reproductive rights, defended on the ground of privacy, it weakened. But when the fight for gay rights became a fight for same-sex marriage, asserted on the ground of equality, it got […]
Cosmology’s hot streak has stalled. Cosmologists have looked deep into time, almost all the way back to the Big Bang itself, but they don’t know what came before it. They don’t know whether the Big Bang was the beginning, or merely one of many beginnings. Something entirely unimaginable might have preceded it. Cosmologists don’t know […]
Huckleberry seized my hand, clasping it so tight he brought back in a quick flood of feelings those years with the Widow Watson, and whispered as if he wanted only me and not his friend to hear, “You take care of yourself, Jim, and keep out of all that trouble, please, cause this world is […]
One challenge for Andreessen is whether venture itself has a skills problem. If software is truly eating the world, wouldn’t venture capital be on the menu? The AngelList platform now allows investors to fund startups online. Its co-founder Naval Ravikant said that “future companies will require more two-hundred-thousand-dollar checks and way fewer guys on Sand […]
The day after Madison jumped, Jim walked to the top of the parking garage. He read the phrase, She had wings on. He spoke with Madison’s friends. He compiled clues. Then he stopped. He could spend his life trying, in vain, to make his child whole again, he thought. Or he could work to keep […]
The other day I got some good news and, wanting to share it, reflexively typed “dad” into my phone. There are moments in grief when the finality sets in, and here it was: I would never be able to hear his voice again. But I’ve realized, strangely, that instead of resenting the Internet, I’m grateful […]
Salon workers describe a culture of subservience that extends far beyond the pampering of customers. Tips or wages are often skimmed or never delivered, or deducted as punishment for things like spilled bottles of polish. At her Harlem salon, Ms. Cacho said she and her colleagues had to buy new clothes in whatever color the […]
“It didn’t occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret.” –Author Louise Erdrich, in the Paris Review. Read the interview
As I described in the Making of Ferguson, the federal government maintained a policy of segregation in public housing nationwide for decades. This was as true in northeastern cities like New York as it was in border cities like Baltimore and St. Louis. In 1994, civil rights groups sued the Department of Housing and Urban […]
Save the date! On June 24, Longreads will be hosting a free night of storytelling at the Booksmith in San Francisco, featuring: Clara Jeffery (Mother Jones) Mat Honan (BuzzFeed) Susie Cagle (journalist & illustrator) Elizabeth Lopatto (The Verge) Emily Thelin (writer, Food & Wine) Dan Stone (Radio Silence) * * * Wednesday, June 24, 7:30 p.m. The Booksmith […]
Mark Attanasio: The day started at 5, not 5:01. …You got in between 4:30 and 5 and got yourself situated. … Often clients would show up early to man up and show Mike, “Hey, I’m here, too.” G. Chris Andersen: We financed Ted Turner. We financed John Malone. Mark Attanasio: Within a year I was […]
The Pulitzer Prizes winners have been announced: Bloomberg News’s Zachary R. Mider was awarded a prize for explanatory reporting on corporate tax dodgers. Carol D. Leonnig of The Washington Post was awarded a national reporting award for her coverage of security lapses in the Secret Service. The New York Times won an international reporting award for its coverage of the Ebola break in West Africa. Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle was given the award for commentary for her columns about grand jury abuses. Mary McNamara, a TV critic for the Los Angeles Times was awarded a prize for criticism. A list of the all the winners and finalists can be found here. Below is a short list of other features that were honored today.
Tennessee Williams tasked James Grissom with seeking out each of the women (and few men) who had inspired his work—Maureen Stapleton, Lillian Gish, Marlon Brando and others—so that he could ask them a question: had Tennessee Williams, or his work, ever mattered?
Dolphin trainer Ashley Guidry loved her job and the animals she worked with—in particular, a dolphin calf named Chopper. But years of seeing how business was done behind the scenes at a small marine park made her come to the painful conclusion that she had to walk away from it all.
In classical anthropology, there’s a rigid distinction between “field” and “home.” Field’s where you go to do your research, immersing yourself, sometimes at great personal risk, in a maelstrom of raw, unsorted happening. Home’s where you go to sort and tame it: catalogue it, analyze it, transform it in to something meaningful. But when the […]
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