Every off-season, Popovich puts together a substantial list of books he intends to read during his downtime.
Our Picks
Against Willpower
It’s a concept that has shaped ethical debates for centuries. A clinical psychiatrist now thinks it’s time we got rid of it.
The Jellyfish Are Coming: Brace Yourself for Goo-mageddon
Endless streams of jellyfish are taking a bite out of fish stocks, clogging water pipes, and scuppering seaside vacations. What to do: destroy them, control them, or just leave them be?
The Joker: Nikola Jokic Gets Serious In Denver
Nikola Jokic has been in the NBA for just two seasons, but the Serbian center, who plays for the Denver Nuggets, has in that short time managed to completely revolutionize how the position (perhaps) should be played. Though Jokic stands 6-foot-10, he plays with a flash and style that seem suited for someone much smaller, and Sports Illustrated’s Lee Jenkins perfectly illustrates the illusion that Jokic represents—at a time when the NBA is skewing towards hybrids that can stretch the floor while still crashing the glass, Jokic is perfectly comfortable skewering opposing defenses with his deft touch, smoothly disjointed post moves, and absurdly beautiful no look passes.
What It’s Like to Lose Your Short-Term Memory
Longreads is proud to feature an exclusive excerpt from Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life, the forthcoming memoir by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee. Lee’s story was first featured on Longreads in 2014, for her BuzzFeed essay, “I Had a Stroke at 33.”
Trump Revives a Shameful Tradition: Targeting a Minority Group with Crime Reports
The president’s executive orders and inflammatory rhetoric follow a predictable path.
Making Sense of Our Compulsions
Sharon Begley explores the behaviors we engage in to cope with unbearable anxiety.
My Weekend at a Sex Lodge
Feeling depressed post-election and run down by the rigors of parenthood, Ada Calhoun and her husband try to rekindle their spark at the kind of “romantic” Poconos resort she saw advertised on television as a kid–champagne-glass-shaped jacuzzi and all.
Eating Toward Immortality
For nutritionist and intuitive eating advocate Michelle Allison, diet culture is just another way of dealing with the fear of death.
Read the Letter Coretta Scott King Wrote Opposing Sessions’s 1986 Federal Nomination
On Tuesday, February 7th, Elizabeth Warren was silenced by Republicans at Jeffrey Sessions’s confirmation hearing as Attorney General, because she read aloud Coretta Scott King’s March 19, 1986 letter to Senator Strom Thurmond opposing Sessions’ appointment as a Federal Judge for the Southern District of Alabama. King’s objection stemmed from Sessions’ alleged attempts to intimidate elderly black voters from voting, via a 1984 voter fraud case he prosecuted. In the letter, she writes, “Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box. Mr. Sessions has used-the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge. This simply cannot be allowed to happen.” (Many news outlets have since published links to the letter, but most credit the Washington Post with having it first.)
How a Global Board Games Giant Exploited Ireland’s Magdalene Women
In 20th century Ireland, thousands of women were forced into authoritarian convents for acts deemed immoral, even though some them resulted from sexual abuse. While they were there, one private company put many of these women to work and then tried to hide its own shameful behavior.