The Editors' Longreads Picks

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The Editors' Longreads Picks

  <figcaption>
    A room wallpapered in (presumably unread) <em>New Yorkers</em>.
    
      
          Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lars_o_matic/15757978592/"> lars_o_matic</a>.
      
    
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  • Two chefs found success in one of the unlikeliest places in Utah. Now they're doing "hand-to-hand combat" with the White House.
  • The self-help movement has "a startling paucity of theories" about the self. To be precise: It has one.
  • Manhattan is a wealthy ghost town, empty but for places selling things that Amazon can't provide.
  • A longread on Google's overambitious former head of autonomous cars makes you wonder whether self-driving cars are worth the hype.
  • An investigation into "a new and incendiary business: militarized contract killing, carried out by skilled American fighters."
  • Confessions of an ATF agent who infiltrated one of Los Angeles's worst motorcycle gangs.
  • Evidence shows that literature can reshape a reader's mind—even perhaps when thoughts aren't overtly expressed or described.
  • Democracy is a hard-won, easily rolled back state of affairs—"from which many secretly yearn to be released."
  • The sometimes-real, sometimes-imagined war between America and atheism is as old as America itself.
  • Oregon's cannabis legalization has gone off-script, plagued by overproduction, ecological threats, and inaccurate reporting.
  • Socialists could be more vocal about their ability to incorporate innovation—and even the market—into a mixed economy.
  • Alexander Chee on learning to live in—and love—New York.
  • Rosecrans Baldwin planned to spend a month sampling Los Angeles woo-woo. Then events turned much darker than planned.
  • Isaiah Berlin's pluralist rejection of ultimate solutions remains a best argument for liberalism.
  • “We’re dancing with the devil here.” Neurochemical events may underlie the placebo effect—which suggests it's manufacturable.
  • A food writer reckons with the knowledge that his glowing review killed a restaurant by overwhelming it with too much business.
  • Thirty years after his early climate change reporting, Bill McKibben assesses our extraordinary hubris in the face of extinction.
  • The share of Americans who believe in the devil is up more than 8% since 1990.
  • The consequences of being a white police officer who refuses to shoot a black man.
  • How to redesign an outdated, centralized, top-down power grid.
  • Among the findings of an analysis on domestic slayings in America: Nearly a third of the perpetrators were publicly known threats.
  • The case for Agatha Christie.
  • An in-depth look at suicide from a writer who has attempted it many times.
  • The number of hate crimes in the US is artificially low, and one reason may be that police don't correctly classify attacks.
  • To keep activists under control, China sends them on vacation, otherwise known as bei lüyou, “to be touristed.”
  • A fascinating account of how Russia came to possess the nerve agents used in recent poisonings around London.
  • "We need to rewrite the stories we tell about nature and Los Angeles is the best place to do it."
  • America's violent crimes are down overall, but unsolved shootings in cities are up, leaving residents with a new uneasiness.
  • The dramatic, chilling, inside story of the Thai soccer team cave rescue.
  • How a “private Mossad” came to be involved in a small-town election for the hospital board.
  • A Swiss company is confidently optimistic it can capture CO₂ from the air and bury it underground—eventually for less $100 a ton.
  • In the ongoing argument over whether the universe preserves or prevents life, the preservers are currently winning.
  • The "World's Greatest Art Thief" explains his primary motivation: an absent father.
  • Patricia Lockwood explains the internet of your mind.
  • The true reality of confronting white supremacy, as learned in South Africa: “It means white people giving things up.”
  • A very good, very thorough—almost too thorough?—profile of Bill Hader by Tad Friend.
  • A tour of Yosemite’s Lyell Glacier helps explain where climate change is headed.
  • Politically, the prison abolition movement is hard to discuss. Morally, it's clearly right.
  • The unique, horrifying, and inspiring story of an unlikely relationship between a Guantánamo prisoner and his guard.
  • Los Angeles has a shade problem: It's often understood as "a luxury amenity," and on many blocks it's basically outlawed.
  • The new race to the moon isn't among superpowers, but businesses who want to break altogether new ground.
  • Thirty years later, a Phildelphia native tries to make sense of the devastating MOVE bombing.
  • "People want us to starve to reduce carbon emissions." Carbon credits comfort the rich, but the real-world use is impractical.
  • Lyz Lenz on the bygone era of mom blogs, replaced by mom influencers and savvy monetization.
  • On the origins of the anthropocene as our current geologic epoch, and the theory's many supporters and detractors.
  • America spends $35 billion a year on substance-abuse treatments. Heavy drinking causes 88,000 deaths a year.
  • William Langewiesche goes deep on Malaysia's missing flight 370, finding more riddles with the police than in the sea.
  • A very good account of young women in New Hampshire and a dogged detective taking down a cyber-stalker.
  • A glimpse inside the classes European sailors took—as far back as the 16th century—to learn how to navigate the globe.
  • Defendants can pay hundreds of dollars month for an ankle monitor—and if they can't pay, they may go to jail.
  • The murder trial of Drakeo the Ruler offers a way "to examine the toxic plaque corroding the American criminal justice system."
  • A massive assessment of two books on the life and career of Prince.
  • "The left, let’s be honest, has had a pretty bad century so far." And that is where Universal Basic Income comes in.
  • On Neil Young and his ambition to bring fidelity to digitally distributed music.
  • osecrans Baldwin follows a young actress around Hollywood for a year to find out what it takes to “make it” in 2019.
  • On industrial noise, which is growing louder—faster than our bodies can adapt.
  • A lovely profile of Thomas Joshua Cooper, photographing the edges of the source of Western civilization.
  • The Aru Islands, where Wallace came up with his ideas on evolution, are set to become a sugar plantation.
  • On the struggling Biden campaign's continued efforts to push its candidate's "Big Presidential Energy."
  • A profile of Bruno Manser, the fascinating Swiss cowherd who became a "secretary" to Malaysia's nomadic Penan tribe.
  • How the Palmer Raids targeted political dissidents in America 100 years ago, arresting thousands—and nearly deporting them.
  • An enlightening—and disturbing—report on public schools' use of "seclusion rooms" to isolate students with disabilities.
  • As survival rates improve, cancer becomes a chronic condition—and patients become a consistent revenue stream for hospitals.
  • A lovely article by a political reporter with a stutter on Joe Biden’s struggle with his own.
  • Cryptocurrency will not die. In fact, it might be stronger than ever. Rosecrans Baldwin follows a young man down the rabbit hole.
  • An investigation finds Amazon facilities' rate of serious injuries is more than double the national warehousing average.
  • Akin to a Starr Report, here is a synthesized narrative of the Ukraine affair based on what we know so far.
  • Rather than install measures to prevent sex offenders from using its free apps, Match prefers to tell users to use "common sense."
  • Running out of options, some Lyme patients are turning to bee stings in hopes of disease remission.
  • A disconcerting dive into online murder markets.
  • A great essay about the words being coined—from "solastalgia" to "pre-TSD"—for those who suffer from accepting the climate crisis.
  • Art critic Peter Schjeldahl, with only a few months left to live, is "taking in every last detail of the pulsating world."
  • How the internet killed feminism.
  • Exposed to violent content daily, some YouTube moderators are suffering from PTSD. (Warning: Disturbing descriptions ahead.)
  • America's class war is "between elites primarily dependent on capital gains and those primarily dependent on profes­sional labor."
  • Jill Lepore finally opens her best friend's laptop, 20 years after her death.
  • Comparing social studies textbooks customized for California and Texas illuminates America's deepest partisan divides.
  • An essay by Dayna Tortorici on the push and pull of an Instagram addiction.
  • The market wants us to live alone, or in small units. David Brooks joined a much larger "forged family" and thinks you should too.
  • In mountaineering circles, death is almost predictable. A Bozeman therapist/shaman tries to help surviving colleagues cope.
  • "The work I now want to do no longer fits into the Post scheme." The 1960s changed Norman Rockwell into a social liberal.
  • A fabulous essay by Meehan Crist on whether or not to have children during the climate crisis.
  • Instagram-ready feminism packaged as a public good—i.e., The Wing—is great until you actually have to work there.
  • The coronavirus has already changed the world, and it's hard to see how we're ever going back.
  • Bill Buford recalls learning how to bake bread from a master in Lyon.
  • A remarkable photo-essay of migrants attempting to reach the United States through the Darién Gap.
  • Supermarkets won't ever be the same—in part because online grocery shopping was already abandoning the myth of abundance.
  • TMN's Rosecrans Baldwin embeds with various government agencies and survival experts to track down the horsemen of the apocalypse.
  • Stories of conformity from recent history and other theories attempt to explain why Republicans won’t turn on Trump.
  • Thanks to the pandemic, professional tennis is undergoing massive shifts—and it desperately needs more self-aware conversations.
  • Nikole Hannah-Jones makes the (convincing) case for reparations.
  • How the production of American diet staples—in this case, a July 4th meal—can expose thousands of US workers to the coronavirus.
  • Excellent reporting after a protest in Ohio—turned violent thanks to anti-protesters—exposed years of overt and covert racism.
  • Blacks in the US know fascism has long been a part of America.
  • An interactive migration model shows where people will go as the climate crisis forces mass movement.
  • "It took way too much Black death to get here." Kiese Makeba Laymon at the onset of the pandemic, while on book tour.
  • What we talk about when we talk about defunding the police.
  • To keep the United States on a 1.5 degree warming path, a top energy expert says we need to electrify everything immediately.
  • Modeling where Americans will move over the coming decades as the climate crisis changes life as we know it.
  • NPR’s Nina Totenberg remembers her great friend Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

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