Once an enemy of the U.S., Vietnam is growing as a country, and has become a key ally “as a counter to China’s rising power”: Nothing better illustrates the Vietnamese desire to be a major player in the region than the country’s recent purchase of six state-of-the-art Kilo-class submarines from Russia. A Western defense expert […]
Tag: longreads
[Fiction] A baby’s arrival stirs up difficult memories: I sat with the baby in the living room, setting her on a clean blanket. When I tired of watching her, I stretched out, resting my hand on her stomach. I fell asleep with the baby staring at me, her eyes wide open. In the morning, my […]
One of the greatest athletes of all time faded into the background while his wife and daughters became reality TV stars: Fathers suffer a curse, and Bruce Jenner knows this curse better than most: The day you become a father, you stop being who you were. In the eyes of your children, your life began […]
The Internet was supposed to liberate artists and replace the traditional businesses that had been disrupted by digital distribution. Musician David Lowery (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker) says the math still isn’t working: I was like all of you. I believed in the promise of the Internet to liberate, empower and even enrich artists. I still […]
[Fiction] The pressure of exams and college acceptances, and the decisions that stem from it: In the first quarter of sophomore year, Cindy got an A-minus in Chemistry, and Paul Takahashi caught up to her. We liked Paul okay, but once he’d won the top spot, we had trouble maintaining our good feelings toward him. […]
A writer who’s expecting meets one of the pioneers of the home birth movement, and considers whether to have her baby at home or in a hospital: When I reached my due date, an ultrasound estimated that my baby weighed 9.4 pounds. I didn’t have gestational diabetes and had gained an average amount of weight, […]
How Moammar Gadhafi’s regime built a surveillance network called the Electric Army that captured all Internet traffic going in and out of Libya, and how dissidents fought back. Gwaider’s favored method, like that of Kevin Mitnick, the famous American hacker he admired, was “social engineering,” which meant tricking the victims into giving up access themselves. […]
A history of how chickens went from the jungle to dinner tables all around the world: Europeans arriving in North America found a continent teeming with native turkeys and ducks for the plucking and eating. Some archaeologists believe that chickens were first introduced to the New World by Polynesians who reached the Pacific coast of […]
Nearly one year after taking over for Steve Jobs, a report card for the new CEO. The company has never been more efficient, or fun, but some are wondering about the future of the products: The ultimate ‘tell’ of tectonic changes at Apple will be the quality of its products. Those looking for deficiencies have […]
The story of a sex abuse scandal inside a Tulsa Christian school, where church leaders were in denial and where the crimes shattered the lives of victims and their families: No more sleepovers. No more babysitting, or car rides home. No more being alone with children or ‘lingering hugs given to students (especially using your […]
[Fiction] The lifelong impact of brief friendships. A woman meets three friends in college who have special gifts: Charles voice is controlled mortification. You fainted, he says. One of the girls holds my hand. You totally did, she agrees. Where are the birds? I say. They disappeared when you fainted, the other Earring Girl says. […]
The gifted R&B singer, who’s spent years fighting addiction, attempts a comeback: Black stardom is rough, dude,” Chris Rock tells me when I reach him to talk about D. “I always say Tom Hanks is an amazing actor and Denzel Washington is a god to his people. If you’re a black ballerina, you represent the […]
The U.S. is supporting the Honduras government in an effort to crack down on drug trafficking. But are we aiding and arming the wrong side? In some ways, it was just one more bloody episode in a blood-soaked country. In the early hours of the morning on May 11, a group of indigenous people traveling […]
A story of love and revolution in Cuba. William Morgan was a free-spirited American drawn to Cuba to help Castro fight, only to grow disenchanted with his embrace of communism: One day in the spring of 1958, while Morgan was visiting a guerrilla camp for a meeting of the Second Front’s chiefs of staff, he […]
Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted the world would end on May 21, 2011. It didn’t. A look at what happened to some of Camping’s followers: I was struck by how some believers edited the past in order to avoid acknowledging that they had been mistaken. The engineer in his mid-twenties, the one who told me […]
An examination of one family’s experience with a child who has gender dysphoria: As a teacher, Stephen knew how cruel kids could be. He imagined his child walking into the social battlefield that is school, insisting she was a boy when under her clothing, she wasn’t. What about bathrooms? P.E.? The prom? How would all […]
What is it that makes HBO’s Girls so special? Start with the sex scenes: Afterward, while she is getting dressed, Hannah jokingly refers to herself as the eleven-year-old girl. Adam looks confused and asks what she’s talking about. Hannah reminds him about his fantasy, but clearly her joke has fallen flat, and the disparity between […]
A reflection on a mother’s life, and how advancements in medicine have extended our life expectancy, and have made it more difficult for us to die: ME: ‘Maybe you could outline the steps you think we might take.’ DOCTOR: ‘Wait and see.’ NEUROLOGIST: ‘Monitor.’ DOCTOR: ‘Change the drugs we’re using.’ MY SISTER: ‘Can we at […]
Inside the Emergency Surgical Center for War Victims, a hospital in Afghanistan that’s funded by an Italian NGO and is committed to helping all victims: Last year, Emergency’s three hospitals and 34 clinics across Afghanistan treated nearly 360,000 patients. During the course of reporting this article, after visiting these facilities and meeting a number of […]
A history of sprawl and escape routes in a Central California town, from the perspective of one family searching for its own escape: As I started high school my mom became convinced my dad had ruined her life. They’d married quickly, and for superficial reasons. Two immigrants from the same country, raised in the manacles […]
Ethan Imboden is founder of Jimmyjane, a Bay Area company that is aiming to bring design standards and mainstream acceptance to a product that has long been hidden away from the public: Within Sharper Image, that neck massager became known jokingly as ‘the Sex and the City vibrator,’ but in 2007, Imboden approached the company […]
Technical interview with the sound engineer on two classic U2 albums and how the band recorded them: The band subsequently spent almost half a year in a rented house by the sea near Dublin, using equipment rented from Audio Engineering, Ireland’s largest pro-audio hire company, before moving on to the legendary Windmill Lane studios in […]
A group of Marines discover they have breast cancer—a diagnosis that is rare in men, and even more startling given they all had previously lived in the same area, Camp Lejeune in North Carolina: It all started with Mike Partain, a.k.a. Number One. A barrel-chested father of four with a goatee and a predilection for […]
What the Facebook founder did to outmaneuver his competitors, and the challenges he faces to keep employees motivated and investors happy after the IPO: One area Facebook will have to prove itself in is mobile. Earlier this month, it amended its public filings with the SEC to disclose that it doesn’t collect any meaningful revenue […]
[Fiction] A home-schooled minotaur enters high school and learns to adjust: At the mall a lady offers me a free sample of zit cream and I’m about to be all sarcastic, like “Look, lady— I’ve got a giant bull’s head. No one’s going to notice a few zits.” But there’s something about the way she’s […]
Who is “Gary Jones”? An investigation into how a hacker may have stolen nude photos for a “revenge porn” site: Is it really so easy to hack a Gmail account? See for yourself: Go to the Gmail login screen and click on the frequently ignored link underneath the sign-in menu, ‘Can’t access your account?’ Three […]
Whitney Houston was destined to become as revered as her godmother, Aretha Franklin, before drugs and a toxic marriage caused her to hit rock bottom. A look at the pop icon’s rise and fall, and her final days, when it looked like Houston was going to make a comeback: [Clive Davis] enlisted Diane Warren to […]
[Fiction] When one person loves the other just a little more: William was tall and thin and shy and awkward in school. His best social tool was that he played the piano, and so was recruited for school musicals, which placed him at rehearsals and cast parties with kids he would otherwise scarcely have known. […]
Inside the groundbreaking investigation by Columbia professor James Liebman, on the case of Carlos DeLuna, who was executed in 1989 for a crime he didn’t commit: At the trial, DeLuna’s defence team told the jury that Carlos Hernandez, not DeLuna, was the murderer. But the prosecutors ridiculed that suggestion. They told the jury that police […]
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