Tag: longreads
Very few cases of law enforcement officers who are “feloniously killed” in the line of duty go unsolved. The murder of officer Tom Wood in Maywood, Chicago is one of those unsolved cases, and corruption in the Maywood force may have impeded the investigation: The ensuing homicide investigation was equally haphazard. Several witnesses whom Wood […]
On eating squirrels: But somewhere along the way, squirrel declined in popularity as a game animal, replaced by bigger quarry, such as deer and turkey, whose numbers had grown in the countryside as the number of humans dwindled. Mainstream views on squirrel eating began to drift toward disdainful—it became something hillbillies and rednecks did. In […]
[Fiction] Two friends decide to loot houses after a natural disaster strikes: I turned onto the first street, where we entered one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods, a pink two story house greeting us in every direction. The houses had fared well, except for their roofs, now without tiles. Every roof looked identical, the neighborhood having […]
Eradicating urban poverty was a priority for Obama when he was running for president in 2008, but it has not become a focus for the president during his first term. A look at what still needs to be addressed, and the neighborhood of Roseland, where Obama got his political start: The reason for this shift […]
A writer discusses the awful living conditions of China’s booming cities after seven years of living in the country for seven years, and visiting 21 of China’s 22 provinces: “A Beijing-based blogger who lived in Harbin in 2003 told me about leaving Blues after several drinks and flagging a taxi driver, whom he recognized. ‘The […]
A writer on his experience spending time in an artist colony—and why they actually work: The poet in the studio next to me, Kathryn Levy, was at the time revising her work by reading it aloud, recording it, and playing it back to herself. The murmur of it was reassuring somehow. Years later, when I […]
A look at the Oglala Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and how they’ve preserved their identity and customs after more than a 100 years of a tenuous relationship with the U.S.: Buried deep within the pages of the 2010 Defense appropriations bill, signed by President Barack Obama in December 2009, […]
Faith, technology and Christianity in Silicon Valley: The internet and social media present a conundrum for Chuck DeGroat, the pastor at City Church. With a congregation of hip modern professionals, from architects and financial advisers to programmers and venture capitalists, he can’t afford not to have a Facebook page, Twitter handle, or website. And yet, […]
A writer-comedian reviews his successes and failures, realizing there’s not much difference between the two: You might be thinking to yourself, ‘How do you know the fear never goes away?’ It could just be me. It could just be pessimism, or cynicism. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks a few years back […]
How the 42-year-old Wisconsin representative (and now Mitt Romney VP pick) took a leading role in the Republican Party’s budget battle with President Obama: Three days later, the White House started a livelier debate with Ryan. In a press briefing, Peter Orszag, the budget director at the time, dismantled Ryan’s plan, point by point. Ryan’s […]
An interview with the humorist and essayist about his book, Half Empty, his Academy Award-winning short film, and his recurrence of cancer: GROSS: You were diagnosed with cancer in your 20s. Now you’re in your 40s and have a cancer diagnosis again. Are you dealing with it emotionally differently now in your 40s than you […]
A writer meets with “grinders”—people who are obsessed with human enhancement through the manipulation of their body with technology—and then decides to implant a magnet in his finger: I chatted with Warwick from his office at The University of Reading, stacked floor to ceiling with books and papers. He has light brown hair that falls […]
A history of Mormonism and how it has evolved: Yet how much do specifically Mormon beliefs matter to contemporary Mormons? Brooks’s story, give or take a Nephite or two, could unfold in any fundamentalist community that provides comfort and meaning if you’re prepared to park your critical intelligence in the lot outside the church door. […]
The new Ohio State football coach made a promise to his family that he’d put them first. Will he keep it? Eighty or so people filed into the school cafeteria. Urban and his wife, Shelley, joined their daughter at the front table, watching as Gigi stood and spoke. She’d been nervous all day, and with […]
A trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, joining a UN mission to investigate the massacres there: In the last few months, I’ve spent time in the Democratic Republic of Congo where I used an embarrassing fuck-up by one of the world’s most publicly accountable organizations as a bargaining tool to get a story. A […]
A look at the illegal tunnels that have been dug under the Arizona-Mexico border by Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs, and how U.S. law enforcement teams are dealing with them: Crime has been coming up out of the ground in Nogales for a while now. Since 1995 more than 90 illicit underground passageways have been […]
An examination of authors Gore Vidal and Terry Southern’s literary erotica: Gore Vidal was a friend and admirer of Terry Southern, calling him ‘the most profoundly witty writer of our generation’ and he could not have failed to have had the example of Candy in mind as he embarked on his own adventure in black-humored […]
A writer loses everything on his iPhone, his iPad and his Mac—including all of the photos from the first year and a half of his daughter’s life—after a hacker infiltrates his Amazon, Apple, Gmail and Twitter accounts: Had I been regularly backing up the data on my MacBook, I wouldn’t have had to worry about […]
What can hospitals learn from a national restaurant chain like Cheesecake Factory? ‘It is unbelievable to me that they would not manage this better,’ Luz said. I asked him what he would do if he were the manager of a neurology unit or a cardiology clinic. ‘I don’t know anything about medicine,’ he said. But […]
How a second-generation Chinese daughter of two doctors in Birmingham, Mich., became one of New York City’s finest chefs: Wanting to expand her culinary outlook to include more Eastern flavors, Lo moved to a French-Vietnamese restaurant, Can, where she met Scism, who was working as a grill cook. But it was when Lo took the […]
A man receives a non-negotiable junk mail check for $95,093.35 in the mail, and decides to deposit it in his bank account as a joke. It actually clears his account: The first friend I phoned informed me that it was no mistake at all. Just standard bank policy, crediting my account with the dollar amount […]
In Arizona’s Maricopa County, 80-year-old Joe Arpaio has made a name for himself “for being not just the toughest but the most corrupt and abusive sheriff in America.” He’s now being sued by the Justice Department for civil rights violations against Latinos: Arpaio began focusing on illegal immigration about six years ago, after he watched […]
A writer digs through his personal library of quitting-smoking books as he attempts to quit smoking: Step 3: Go to the Strand. Buy a book you already own—Richard Klein’s Cigarettes Are Sublime. (Your old copy—a gift from one of the girls next door senior year, the same ‘friend’ who another time gave you a carton […]
In the early 1990s, a contractor for Apple had his project cancelled. He then decided to “uncancel” it, and began sneaking into corporate headquarters to finish the job: I asked my friend Greg Robbins to help me. His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would […]
Cosmopolitan magazine is often spurned as “mindless,” but it has also grown into 64 editions worldwide, and a readership of 100 million teens and young women in more than 100 nations—including those “where any discussion of sex is taboo”: Akisheva, the editor in Kazakhstan, told me that until recently, she received a handwritten note from […]
The troubled life of Sage Christensen, who was born in the Ukraine and adopted by a man who would later be accused of sexual abuse. Christensen would eventually be charged with murder: After being taken from Myers, Sage spent the next three years in a blur of foster homes. Myers fought for custody, spending more […]
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