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‘The Stakes May Be the Survival of Civilization’
First Annual Report / National Endowment for the Arts / 1966 / 9 minutes (2,200 words) With the signing of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act on September 29, 1965, President...
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Literature by the Numbers
Jessica Gross | Longreads | March 2017 | 12 minutes (2,982 words) If you’ve ever taken a writing class—or enrolled in high school English—you’ve probably been advised to use fewer adverbs. But does a...
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Moved by Kim
Seth Davis Branitz | Longreads | March, 2017 | 16 minutes (4,085 words) My parents had said it aloud many times, and I had shushed them. I was guilty of sometimes thinking it. “Just kill yourself, or...
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A Culinary Legend’s Next Fight
Emily Kaiser Thelin | Longreads | March 2017 | 9 minutes (2,256 words) The following is a Longreads exclusive excerpt from Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life, the new book...
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The Sense of an Endling
Elena Passarello / Animals Strike Curious Poses / Sarabande Books / March 2017 / 12 minutes (3,100 words) Illustrations from “The Last Menagerie” by Nicole Antebi. The last Woolly Mammoth died on an...
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The Immigration-Obsessed, Polarized, Garbage-Fire Election of 1800
A. Roger Ekirch | American Sanctuary: Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity in the Age of Revolution | Pantheon | February 2017 | 33 minutes (8,149 words) Below is an excerpt from American...
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Woman of Color in Wide Open Spaces
Minda Honey | Longreads | March 2017 | 12 minutes (2,986 words) “And sometimes you meet yourself back where you started, but stronger.” —Yrsa Daley-Ward I sat alone at a picnic table sipping a hot can...
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Building In the Shadow of Our Own Destruction
Colin Dickey | Longreads | April 2017 | 12 minutes (3,060 words) In the opening pages of Austerlitz, W. G. Sebald describes the Antwerp nocturama, a zoo enclosure of simulated darkness designed to...
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The High-Water Mark: The Battle of Gettysburg, the Jersey Shore, and the...
Dane A. Wisher | Longreads | April 2017 | 36 minutes (10,142 words) 2013 * * * “What kind of commie bullshit is that?” “I’m telling you, listen to the album again.” I jam my finger into the bar top...
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The Bitter History of Law and Order in America
Andrea Pitzer | Longreads | April 2017 | 11 minutes (2,800 words) During his heady first days in office, Donald Trump developed his now-familiar ritual for signing executive orders. He began by...
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Considering the Wall
Max Adams | In the Land of Giants: A Journey Through the Dark Ages | Pegasus | October 2016 | 15 minutes (4,012 words) Below is an excerpt from In the Land of the Giants, by Max Adams. This story is...
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The Elements of Bureaucratic Style
Colin Dickey | Longreads | April 2017 | 12 minutes | 3000 words On Monday night, Oscar Munoz, the CEO of United Airlines, sent an internal email to his staff regarding the incident on Flight 3411 in...
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In 1975, Newsweek Predicted A New Ice Age. We’re Still Living with the...
Jack El-Hai | Longreads | April 2017 | 6 minutes (1,500 words) Last year was the hottest on record for the third consecutive pass of the calendar. Glaciers and polar ice melt, plant and animal species...
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How to Disappear
Alex Difrancesco | Longreads | April 2017 | 8 minutes (2,070 words) Last year in New York City, a 19-year-old engineering student named Nayla Kidd went completely off the grid. She changed bank...
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The Currency of Cars: How to Leave a Husband
Debbie Weingarten | Longreads | April 2016 | 10 minutes (2,609 words) The winter that I leave, the desert nights become so cold that cactuses uproot beneath the weight of ice. Old saguaros the size...
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On Island: Journeying to Penal Colonies, from Rikers to Robben
Roohi Choudhry | Longreads | April 2017 | 14 minutes (3,556 words) The Rikers Island jail complex, built on an island just off the borough of Queens in New York City, has been described as the...
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‘No One Should be Doomed to Just One Story’: An ‘S-Town’ Roundtable
Spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t listened to S-Town. You can listen to the podcast on its website or on iTunes. Pam Mandel: I finished S-Town about a week ago but I keep going back to replay the...
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A History of American Protest Music: When Nina Simone Sang What Everyone Was...
Tom Maxwell | Longreads | April 2017 | 10 minutes (2,329 words) On June 12, 1963, in the early morning after president John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights address, activist Medgar Evers was shot in the...
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On Becoming a Woman Who Knows Too Much
Hawa Allan | “Becoming Meta,” from Double Bind: Women on Ambition | April 2017 | 18 minutes (4,661 words) For many women, the idea of ambition is complicated. Too often when we’re are described as...
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Pills and Thrills and Daffodils
Eva Tenuto | Longreads | April 2017 | 9 minutes (2,181 words) It was the summer of 1997. For my 24th birthday, Rachel, one of my best friends, bought me the best present I could imagine receiving: a...
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