A Tall Tree Reading List
“I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK/ I sleep all night and I work all day.” This is what was playing in my head, in an incessant loop, as I worked on this reading list. It’s a song from Monty Python’s Flying...
View ArticleBut Who Tells Them What To Sing?
Adrian Daub | Longreads | September 2021 | 21 minutes (5,894 words) When a new trailer for the Marvel film Black Widow dropped in April of this year — after the movie had been repeatedly moved back due...
View ArticleA Sketch Artist, a Grieving Mother, and An Unsolved Mystery
Nile Cappello | The Atavist Magazine | August 2021 | 7 minutes (1,994 words) This is an excerpt from The Atavist‘s issue no. 118, “The Girl in the Picture,” written by Nile Cappello and illustrated by...
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Twenty Years Later: A 9/11 Reading List
On Tuesday September 11th, 2001 I was at my desk in the Communications Department at Boeing in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The radio was on. Just after 8 a.m. local time, breaking news reported that an...
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Death of Writing, Writing of Death: A Reading List on Artificial Intelligence...
The other day, I saw a tweet of an obituary, seemingly written by a bot. The obituary’s odd but delightful phrases like “Brenda was an avid collector of dust,” “Brenda was a bird,” “she owed us so many...
View ArticleMe and You
William Torrey| Longreads | October 2021 | 30 minutes (9,100 words) I: My Protector Our brotherhood begins with me in a blindfold, one that’s been on for what feels like forever. I’m 18 and pledging a...
View ArticleThe Many Decades of Bond
By Carolyn Wells It had been so long since I had walked down those steps into a poorly lit foyer with low-hanging ceiling tiles, where the scent of buttery popcorn filled the stagnant air, and posters...
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78 Revolutions Around the Sun: A Joni Mitchell Reading List
By Krista Stevens When Rolling Stone “introduced” Joni Mitchell in 1969, the magazine derided her as a composer, singer, and musician, saying that she was “Not bad for a girl who had no voice...
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Curator Spotlight: Robert Sanchez on Highlighting Notable Storytelling from...
By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Related reading: Elaine Godfrey on the death of a local newspaper in Iowa and Nickolas Butler on the power of community journalism in Wisconsin. Last week, the Black Mountain...
View ArticleA New Leaf: A Post-Legalization Cannabis Reading List
By Peter Rubin If you were a pot-smoking teenager in the ’90s, chances are you heard the same urban legend I did. Marlboro’s just waiting for weed to be legalized, man. They’ve got the tobacco fields...
View ArticleThe Strange True Tale of ‘Castro’s No. 1 Killer’
Tony Perrottet| The Atavist Magazine | October 2021 | 9 minutes (2,476 words) This is an excerpt from The Atavist‘s issue no. 120, “The Butcher of Havana,” written by Tony Perrottet and illustrated by...
View ArticleThere Are No Seasons: A Reading List on Loss, Love, and Living with Fire in...
By Cheri Lucas Rowlands As a child in Northern California, fall was my favorite time of year. My birthday is in mid-August, so I was always ready to tackle the next school year, and was excited because...
View ArticleThe Great British Reading List
By Carolyn Wells As the plane dipped below the clouds, an endless patchwork quilt of green fields and russet hedges stretched out beneath me. It had been two years since I had seen that familiar vista,...
View ArticleThe Professor
Irina Dumitrescu | Longreads | November 2021 | 3,065 words (17 minutes) It is the fall of my senior year and I am at a pub with the professor and a group of his students. At one point I look down and...
View Article‘We Are Alive’: Six Longreads About Music
By Krista Stevens My earliest memories involve music. At first, we had an ancient turntable, a penny taped to its arm to prevent it from skipping. My dad loved Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Elvis. My...
View ArticleOur Most-Read Longreads Originals of 2021
It’s that time of year again! Our annual year-end series has evolved over the past decade, but our aim remains the same: to collect and share the very best in longform nonfiction storytelling across...
View ArticleDebt Demands a Body
Kristin Collier| Longreads | November 2021 | 6,596 words (21 minutes) I open the email at 9:30 a.m. in my retrofitted, windowless office on the second floor of a high school in St. Paul. The...
View ArticleLongreads Best of 2021: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2021. Here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email. If you like these, you can sign up to receive our...
View ArticleImpersonation Nation: A Very Scammy Reading List
If the 21st century has been great for one thing, it’s scams. That’s not to say that the last few have been scam-free; 1700s grifter Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy made off with a massive diamond...
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Holiday Gift Guide: 8 Books We Excerpted on Longreads in 2021
Looking for a gift for the reader in your life? Here are eight books we featured on Longreads this year: the memoir of a teen environmentalist, an essay collection on dance and illness, a refugee...
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