The art of writing romance novels: The romance heroine, though possessed of heart, intelligence and beauty, is at the mercy of her own self-criticism most of the time. As the story begins, she is scared and isolated, poor, or abandoned, or lonely. Not infrequently, the book opens with her having just suffered some terrible loss; […]
Tag: longreads
How the uprising in Bahrain failed, and how the United States looked the other way: What this silence conceals is the story of what really happened in the Gulf kingdom last year, and the full story of America’s halfhearted attempts to intervene, which ultimately went nowhere. What it also obscures is that last year’s events […]
A Michigan high school basketball player hits the game-winning shot. Moments later he collapses from cardiac arrest and dies: After the autopsy, when the doctor found white blossoms of scar tissue on Wes Leonard’s heart, he guessed they had been secretly building there for several months. That would mean Wes’s heart was slowly breaking throughout […]
http://vimeo.com/36249878 100 ways to say the words to that special someone: (36) She stands on the unpaved road with your newborn son on her breast. Even though she can’t hear you over the sound of the helicopter, you’re screaming the words. Six months and you’ll send for her. You promise. On a rainy midspring morning […]
The evolution of how we recruit and train spies—starting with the OSS in the 1940s—and our changing expectations of what the job entails and what motivates those who sign up: I remember him saying something like: “This is the only thing in the Army that you can volunteer for and then get out of if […]
Remembering a New York friendship. Excerpted from Manguso’s new book, The Guardians: An Elegy, out Feb. 28: The Thursday edition of the Riverdale Press carried a story that began An unidentified white man was struck and instantly killed by a Metro-North train last night as it pulled into the Riverdale station on West 254th Street. […]
The newly minted Grammy winner’s lows and highs—from throat surgery and heartbreak to the biggest-selling album of last year: Every singer knows the List: citrus, vinegar, mint, dairy, spicy or fried foods, fizzy drinks, caffeine, cigarettes, and alcohol. These are the vocal cords’ enemies. And when one has a five-octave contralto as dynamic, award-winning, moneymaking, […]
Quanitta Underwood and her sister suffered years of sexual abuse from their father. She’s now an Olympic contender in boxing, and a public voice for other survivors: Underwood, of course, covets a gold medal and the fame that would come with it. “I want to take that ride,” she says. “I want to be a […]
[Not single-page] Tory Burch’s ex-husband Christopher Burch has a new fashion line called C. Wonder. But some in her circle wonder if it draws a little too much inspiration from her own brand: To Chris Burch, C. Wonder is the realization of a long-held dream to provide low-to-mid-price retail in a luxury setting. To Tory […]
Two years later, Griffith got a call from a friend. Had he ever heard of Whitney Houston? She asked him. He remembered her name immediately from the show he’d seen and said so. “You better move fast,” she cautioned. “She’s negotiating with Elektra for a deal.” The news shook him up. “I said, ‘Uh-oh – […]
The search for an amateur philosopher who anonymously paid university professors thousands of dollars to review his work: The institute’s letter claimed that a “very substantial sum” had been earmarked to help contribute to “the revival of traditional metaphysics.” Given the number of philosophers involved, that sum was at least in the neighborhood of $125,000. […]
How an unplanned pregnancy during college changed the life and worldview of Maggie Gallagher, now one of the leading voices against gay marriage: On a mild November day, Gallagher and I are upstairs at City Bakery, near Union Square in Manhattan, where after months of requests she has agreed to meet me. As Gallagher tells […]
How one night at Rupert Murdoch’s London townhouse changed the course of the phone-hacking scandal: Red wine in hand, Rupert Murdoch chatted with guests at his London townhouse on what would be one of the most important nights to the future of his company. Gathered for cocktails were Rupert’s son James, heir apparent to the […]
An analysis of the presidency, in historical context: I spoke with current and past members of this administration, officials from previous administrations, current and past members of the Senate and the House, and some academics. Compared with the last two times a Democrat was in the White House—during Jimmy Carter’s administration in the late 1970s […]
In the 1940s, U.S. doctors led experiments that intentionally infected thousands of Guatemalans with venereal diseases. A closer look at how it happened, and who knew: John Cutler, the young investigator who led the Guatemalan experiments, had the full backing of US health officials, including the surgeon general. “Cutler thought that what he was doing […]
[Not single-page] The secret life of Manoj Bhargava, whose 5-Hour Energy caffeine and vitamin shot has rung up more than $1 billion in sales: Bhargava, 58, is so under the radar that he barely registers on Web searches. His paper trail is thin, consisting primarily of more than 90 lawsuits. This is his first press […]
[Fiction, not single-page] A father, his sons, and what he teaches them: When we got home from school Paps was in the kitchen, cooking and listening to music and feeling fine. He whiffed the steam coming off a pot, then clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly. His eyes were wet and sparkled with […]
A brief history of “library porn”: Porn books and librarians have always had a passionate, mutually defining relationship—it was, in fact, a prudish French librarian in the early nineteenth century who coined the word pornography. So it comes as no surprise that the sexy librarian, a fixture of the pornographic imagination, is most at home […]
An artist recreates Gettysburg with a lifelike cyclorama—and the painting changes how many people viewed the battle: “No person should die without seeing this cyclorama,” declared a Boston man in 1885. “It’s a duty they owe to their country.” Paul Philippoteaux’s lifelike depiction of the Battle of Gettysburg was much more than a painting. It […]
The early days of robots. The Age of Enlightenment inspired inventors like Jacques de Vaucanson to create ever more realistic machines that mimicked human behavior: Vaucanson, however, was less a philosophical theorist than a practical, even greedy businessman. In 1739, as profits from the Flute Player’s performances began to decline, he added two new automatons […]
A kung fu master looks for new disciples to pass on his wisdom: Dr. Yang had never had difficulty attracting students in the past—YMAA, the Boston-based organization he founded in 1982, operates more than 60 martial arts schools worldwide—but after more than 25 years, Dr. Yang was growing tired of doling out his ancient teachings […]
Scientist Tyrone B. Hayes discovered a link between the herbicide atrazine and male frogs developing female body parts. His work led to a bizarre battle with atrazine manufacturer Syngenta, in which the two taunted each other over email: When a batch of these emails became public in 2010, Hayes’ supporters and critics alike were stunned. […]
[Fiction] Life behind the cash register, and other possibilities: A proper mental Saturday it is, what with New Sue off with her hernia and the Lukes of Hazzard gone AWOL, so Muggins Here’ll have to cover for everyone else’s break. Not New Sue and Beverly are still giving me the silent treatment ‘cause I can’t […]
[Not single-page.] Financial reform has been more successful at changing Wall Street’s business than many imagined—and the public outcry from Occupy and elsewhere has led to some soul-searching: For New York’s bankers and traders, the new math suddenly reordered their assumptions about their place in a post-crash city. “After tax, that’s like, what, $75,000?” an […]
On making a move from the City to the South. Steven Boone and other New Yorkers have headed to Warner Robins, Georgia: Like so many young black parents, she moved south not just to provide her children with a more secure environment but also to escape the punishing New York rents. In Warner Robins, entire […]
A brief history of the cruise ship industry—from its early idealism to its evolution into “funships” for “Huggets”: Arison found a Norwegian called Knut Kloster who had a suitable boat. Kloster also came from an old shipping family. They had made their fortune shipping ice to Europe from Norway, and they now ran a vast […]
Tim Hennis was an Army sergeant serving at Fort Bragg in 1985 when he was charged with the murder of a woman and her two young daughters. His case has gone to trial three separate times, and the military’s intervention has raised questions about what constitutes double jeopardy: That Saturday, Hennis’s neighbors recalled, he had […]
A Minnesota school district enacts a policy designed to stop teachers from discussing or acknowledging homosexuality. Gay students report bullying, but administrators do nothing. The result is a string of suicides that has shaken the community: Sam’s death lit the fuse of a suicide epidemic that would take the lives of nine local students in […]
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