Longreads

Established in 2009, Longreads focuses on connecting readers with outstanding stories from around the globe. We showcase both nonfiction and fiction pieces that are over 1,500 words long, many of which are suggested by our community members.

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English

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#116818

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#44335

News and Media

#1939

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Articles

The Hobo Handbook

1 day ago | longreads.com | Brendan FitzGerald |Brendan Fitzgerald

For decades, train hoppers have maintained—and guarded access to—the Crew Change Guide, a handbook for riding freight throughout the US and Canada. “You can’t buy such a book, can’t download it, can’t trace its often multiple authors,” Jeremiah David writes. “But if you run in the right circles, all you have to do is ask.” For The Paris Review, David, who never properly asked for his own copy, tells the story of how he came to possess one anyway.
The Curious Case of the Pygmy Nuthatch

2 days ago | longreads.com | Peter Rubin

During the pandemic, Forrest Wickman got into birds. So into birds, in fact, that he started noticing when birdcalls in movies didn’t match up with the birds that were actually on screen. And nothing was quite so egregiously mismatched as a particular bird who appears in 2000’s Charlie’s Angels and is definitively not a pygmy nuthatch. Thankfully, Forrest Wickman is as obsessive about the truth as he is about birds, and his curiosity led him down a doozy of a rabbit hole.
The Price of Remission

6 days ago | longreads.com | Krista Stevens

Multiple myeloma is a painful blood cancer that attacks bone and leaves “distinctive holes in its wake.” You may remember thalidomide, the drug prescribed for morning sickness in the ’50s and ’60s until researchers discovered its link to birth defects. Revlimid is a less potent form; it has shown promise as a therapy for multiple myeloma by starving cancer cells of the blood supply needed to grow.
The Unabomber’s Brother Turned Him In. Then Spent 27 Years Trying to Win Him Back.

6 days ago | longreads.com | Cheri Lucas Rowlands

In a series of recent interviews with The New York Times, David Kaczynski—the younger brother of Ted Kaczynski—reflects on the letters he sent to his brother in prison over nearly three decades. “The letters range from the prosaic to the profound: recollections of childhood softball games, news about David’s retirement, updates on their aging mother’s declining health,” writes Serge F. Kovaleski.
North Korea Stole Your Job

1 week ago | longreads.com | Krista Stevens

Working remotely? Are you sure you know exactly who your coworkers are? For Wired, Bobbie Johnson reports on the rise of North Korean job thieves.
‘He’s Trying to Colonize This Community’: Inside Elon Musk’s Plan to Take Over This Texas Town

1 week ago | longreads.com | Cheri Lucas Rowlands

For Politico, Will McCarthy reports from the rural outskirts of unincorporated Boca Chica Village, a small South Texas community where Elon Musk is attempting to build his own city: Starbase. McCarthy vividly captures the strangeness and uncertainty of the moment with sharp details—a road off the highway that reads Mars-a-Lago, a vandalized nine-foot tall bust of Musk bearing a pink bandage over a gashed cheek.
We’ve Been Thinking About Love All Wrong

1 week ago | longreads.com | Krista Stevens

Suleika Jaouad wrote “Life, Interrupted,” a New York Times series about living with cancer as a young adult. After a lifetime of ephemeral friendships, Jaouad recalls the deep bond she formed with Anjali, a woman who was fighting cancer at the same time. In an excerpt of her new work of nonfiction, “The Book of Alchemy,” Jaouad explores the meaning of love and friendship as she reflects on offering music, comfort, and simply being present for Anjali during her final days.
Russia’s ‘Ghost Detainees’: The Investigation That Cost Viktoriia Roshchyna Her Life

1 week ago | longreads.com | Brendan FitzGerald |Brendan Fitzgerald

When Viktoriia Roshchyna was 26 years old, Russia announced the annexation of several regions in Ukraine, including Zaporizhzhia, her birthplace. Now, Zaporizhzhia “sits behind the thick fog of an unmoving frontline,” Phineas Rueckert and Tetiana Pryimachuk write for Forbidden Stories.
The King of X - Longreads

1 week ago | longreads.com | Cheri Lucas Rowlands

If you partied in Dallas in the 1980s, chances are you spent time at the Starck Club, the legendary hot spot where celebrities, Southern socialites, and queer folks converged under one roof to dance—and take a ton of MDMA. For Texas Monthly, Tom Foster tells the story of Robert Jenkins, a pioneering ecstasy manufacturer and distributor during the ’80s and ’90s, and paints a fascinating picture of Dallas’s pill-popping party scene.
The Gospel of Change

1 week ago | longreads.com | Krista Stevens

In 2017, James Wade and his wife Jordan were working long hours at unfulfilling jobs, certain that “happines was just around the corner.” Realizing that it was not, the couple purged their possessions and set off in an old truck pulling a travel trailer. Over a two-year journey across 30 states, they searched for a life driven less by money and empty achievement to one geared toward being at peace with oneself.