Gabrielle Gantz (@contextual_life) is the blogger behind The Contextual Life, a frequent longreader, and a fan of podcasts. 1. How Hip-Hop Works (Stuff You Should Know, 52:13) In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Chuck and Josh discuss the history of hip-hop, from The Sugar Hill Gang to the present. They add their own […]
The city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy, but there’s some good news from residents like Andy Didorosi, who responded to the death of the city’s light-rail plans by building his own private bus service, The Detroit Bus Company. Dark Rye, which devoted its June issue to Detroit, took a closer look inside Didorosi’s company […]
“How foolish they are to try to make something.” Here’s the classic 1981 BBC interview highlighting the work of theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.” You can also read Feynman’s book of the same name. For further reading and viewing on Feynman: 1. The ‘Dramatic Picture’ of Richard Feynman (Freeman […]
Mark Armstrong is the founder of Longreads and editorial director for Pocket. Last week we lost a pioneer of early computing, Doug Engelbart, and Tom Foremski has an excellent short backstory about the inventor of the mouse. It was Engelbart’s 1968 demo of computer graphical user interfaces that inspired everything we now use today—yet despite his […]
Geoff Van Dyke is deputy editor of 5280 Magazine in Denver. *** The Future of Advertising, by Danielle Sacks, Fast Company A must-read for anyone in the media business. Innocence Lost, by Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly Instrumental in getting a Texas man off death row and out of prison. Burger Queen, by Lauren Collins, The […]
Ginsberg Internets the Internet: The longest reads in the world jordanginsberg: I’m trying out a new “blog character” who only posts quotes and makes lists. It is going to be a big hit on the Internet, I reckon. Also, it is pretty amazing that the Longreads phenomenon has taken off, that there is a determined […]
Joe Pompeo: Everybody’s doing this so I wanted to join in the fun joepompeo: My 2010 #longreads list, off the top of my head and kind of random, probably excluding lots of great pieces that I loved but cannot think of at the moment: “Lounge Lizard John Lurie’s disappearing act,” Tad Friend, The New Yorker […]
infinite jess: State of the Industry infinitejess: Thanks to the Bastard Blizzard of 2010, I had plenty of unexpected time this week to get nostalgic, which is by all accounts the best thing to do at this time of year. (Except, oh, drink glühwein in Heidelberg, but whatever.) So I started paging through my bookmarks […]
I’m the biology features editor for the news team at Nature, the UK-based science journal. Longreads kindly asked me to offer up my five favourite couldn’t-put-down features for the year, and I was happy to comply. The focus on biology wasn’t intentional, but I did purposely keep features from Nature out of the running (it’s […]
Ben Cohen: These are a few of my favorite things Thank you Ben. Amazing list. bzcohen: I started using Instapaper on a plain ol’ iPod—I know, right?—around June, and I’ve since starred about 180 items, a number that, for the most part, doesn’t include the people and places I can’t not read: The Awl, and […]
Paul Brady is an editor at Condé Nast Traveler. *** This isn’t a list of the best travel writing of the year, but if this is what travel writing could be every time, the genre wouldn’t have such a shaky reputation. I didn’t pick anything from Traveler because that would be lame. Pass the Bucks […]
Juli Weiner blogs for Vanity Fair. *** These are the pieces I sent out to friends with the all-caps subject line, “THIS.” These are the pieces I come back to when I’m looking to improve my own writing. These are the pieces I’ll be re-reading well into 2011. Jon Ronson: And God Created Controversy, The […]
Foster Kamer (ex-BlackBook + Gawker + Village Voice) is online features and news editor at Esquire. *** 2010 was an incredible year for writing, bottom line. Despite the proliferation of things whose output is mostly antagonistic to great writing — like faceless “content farms” churning out hollow, Google-gaming information lacking anything of substance — great writing persisted. Twitter’s evolving […]
The Best Longreads of 2010: Science, Medicine & Technology Third and final round in our “Best #longreads of 2010” collaboration with BrainPickings.org. Today: Science, Medicine & Tech—with stories from Amy Harmon, Andrew Rice, Jerome Groopman, Logan Ward, The Oil Drum, Lawrence Lessig, and more.
benjamingold: Hey it’s the end of 2010, publishers are still trying to figure out how to make money off their online content, and here are my favorite pieces of long form journalism that was published this year (plus one from the 90s)! Richard Morgan, “Seven Years as a Freelance Writer, or, How To Make Vitamin Soup,” (The […]
Jay Caspian Kang is a fiction writer living in San Francisco. He is the author of The High is Always the Pain and the Pain is Always the High, an essay on gambling addiction that appeared in the Morning News and has been named on several “Best of 2010” lists. *** In no particular order. […]
Patrick Doyle is a senior editor for 5280 Magazine in Denver. patrickcdoyle: The good folks at Longreads.com have been asking everyone for their five favorite pieces from 2010. Here are mine. “Roger Ebert: The Essential Man,” by Chris Jones, EsquireThe best story of the year. Just give Jones his Ellie now. “The End of Men,” […]
Mallary Tenore covers media news for the Poynter Institute’s Poynter.org. *** Timothy Lavin: The Listener, The Atlantic, Jan/Feb 2010 Refreshing to see well-written stories about lesser-known media phenomena like Coast to Coast AM. James Verini: Lost Exile, Vanity Fair, Feb. 23, 2010 Verini does a great job describing what the death of the paper (in this case, Russia’s English-language […]
My Top 10 Business #Longreads of 2010 Round Two with the excellent @BrainPicker. I tried to minimize repeats with this one—stories here from David Carr, Kathryn Schulz, Nicola Twilley, Mike Riggs, Felix Salmon, David Segal, Tony Hsieh, Paul Graham, James Surowiecki and Bryan Urstadt.
Joe Spring and Chris Keyes are editors for Outside Magazine. *** The Most Isolated Man on the Planet, Slate, Monte Reel (Aug. 20, 2010) He’s alone in the Brazilian Amazon, but for how long? The Last Patrol, The Atlantic, Brian Mockenhaupt (November 2010) A veteran unit patrolling the Devil’s Playground hands off its territory to […]
Amy K. Nelson is a writer for ESPN.com. (She and Elizabeth Merrill also wrote this great longread about sports and infidelity.) *** Longreads asked me to compile my Top 5 of 2010. An impossible task, and I know a few of mine are on other people’s lists. Here’s what I drew up: The Case of the […]
Rich Ziade is partner and lead strategist at Arc90, notable for many things including creation of the wondrous Readability app. (Ed. note: We know: One of the stories below is from 2009, and another is from 2007.) *** • Paul Graham ruminates over the deflationary value of stuff. • Zak Smith debates which is more […]
Top 10 Longreads for Art, Design, Film & Music I teamed with the wonderful BrainPickings.org to feature my favorites in this category. Some of you beat me to the punch on these, but there are a few new gems in there (Stephen Tobolowsky, I’m looking at you).
soupsoup: With a bit more time on my hands commuting a few stops on the subway, I need some reading material to Instapaper to my iPad. Longreads has been invaluable in providing me with a great selection of really interesting articles. Along the way, there were five particular stories this year that really caught my […]
Gangrey All-Stars: Top 5 Longreads of 2010 Gangrey.com, btw, is the heart and soul of long-form journalism. Click for Top 5 lists from writers including Thomas Lake (Sports Illustrated), Ben Montgomery (St. Petersburg Times), Wright Thompson (ESPN), Michael Kruse (St. Petersburg Times), and Justin Heckert (ESPN).
Gillian Reagan is an editor at Capital New York. She does other stuff, too. *** My rule was to steer clear of Capital articles (although you will recognize some bylines from contributors). These articles that weren’t necessarily the best writing of the year, but have frequently popped up and rolled around in my brain long […]
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