From David Sedaris in The New Yorker: acquiring a Fitbit™ and an addiction to tracking his movements.
The New Yorker
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why Do We Get Suspicious About ‘Extreme Morality’?
“Some thought people who appeared to be extremely ethical must be somehow cheating—that they couldn’t actually be doing all those good things. Others believed they were doing those things, but they found that so weird that they thought they must have some kind of mental illness—that they must lack the ordinary component of desires or […]
Posted inNonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Which Kind of Failure Are You?
Clay Christensen has compared the theory of disruptive innovation to a theory of nature: the theory of evolution. But among the many differences between disruption and evolution is that the advocates of disruption have an affinity for circular arguments. If an established company doesn’t disrupt, it will fail, and if it fails it must be […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Science of Suppressing Traumatic Memories
I had come to his house, in this sunny spot between Ben Gurion Airport and the Mediterranean coast, for an unlikely reason: not long ago, after decades of unwavering silence, Sigmund Schiller spoke about his Holocaust experience. “People talk about ‘Sophie’s Choice’ as if it were a rare event,” he said. “It wasn’t. Everybody had […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Fault in Our Canon: A Reading List About Problems in the Literary Canon
This brief list is but a glimpse of the complex, crucial and ongoing discussion about the importance of inclusivity and the problems with privilege in the literary canon. Please share your recommendations: essays and articles in this vein, books you wish the canon could accept, etc. 1. “On ‘The John Green Effect,’ Contemporary Realism, and […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Confronting the Top Brass at The New York Times About Pay Discrepancy
Jill Abramson left the New York Times’s executive editor position today and was replaced by Dean Baquet, the managing editor at the newspaper. At The New Yorker, Ken Auletta writes about what happened behind the scenes: As with any such upheaval, there’s a history behind it. Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Education Reform, Spent on Consultants
During the next two years, more than twenty million dollars of Zuckerberg’s gift and matching donations went to consulting firms with various specialties: public relations, human resources, communications, data analysis, teacher evaluation. Many of the consultants had worked for Joel Klein, Teach for America, and other programs in the tight-knit reform movement, and a number […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. ***