Danger on the Divide
Just because you don’t recognize trouble doesn’t mean it’s not there.
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A Journey of 6,000 Miles
Layan Albaz is one of thousands of Palestinian children who have lost limbs in Israeli air strikes—and one of the very few evacuated to the US for medical care.
Predator or Prey
“I still want to feel each meal, each touch, each body I absorb into mine.”
How to Run 314 Miles After a Traumatic Brain Injury
After a horrific accident, doctors told Todd Barcelona that he’d likely never race again. So he and his wife decided to run farther than they ever had before.
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Kickstart your weekend by getting the week’s best reads, hand-picked and introduced by Longreads editors, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning.
Weekly Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories by Willa Köerner, Robyn Ross, Ariel Sabar, Julian Lucas, and Dan Moore.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending excellent stories by Charlotte Higgins, Lex Pryor, Michael Hardy, Elissa Altman, and Brad Phillips.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we’re recommending stories by Andrew R. Chow; Jonathan Blake; Maurice Tamman, Laura Gottesdiener, and Stephen Eisenhammer; Drew Anderson; and Ben Buckland.
Essays and Features
The Great Debate: Recorders vs. Notebooks
On how one narrative journalist decided never to use a tape recorder in his reporting—and why it matters.
Open to the Outlandish: A Conversation with Rebecca Renner
On getting that first draft down, the importance of a strong editor, and how a story evolves from pitch to publication.
Creation of Woman: Evangelical and Transgender in the Bible Belt
How a spouse’s confession freed a young couple from gender expectations in the Deep South.
Finding Worth Among the Echoes
Faded music dreams, a fledgling family farm, and a search for new definitions of work and success.
The Shapes of Silence
On coming out and how secrets protect and harm us.
A Vigilante Murder in Grand Marais
How a shocking crime divided a small Minnesota town.
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Reading Lists
Bad Blood (Longreads’ Version): A Musical Feuds Reading List
Whether competition between artists or strife within a band, popular music features some of pop culture’s messiest rivalries.
Wild Talk: A Reading List On Artificial Intelligence and Interspecies Communication
AI is opening up the possibility of communicating with other animals. But will we listen? And can we ever truly understand?
Untold Fortunes: A Reading List on the Creative Uses of the Tarot
Five stories that explore cultural and literary references to the tarot.
Knife Insurance: An Extreme Surgery Reading List
Never before have so many people sought medical intervention to address their insecurities—and never before has that intervention gone to such lengths.
Girls Will Be Girls: A Reading List on Consumerism in the Internet Age
Are the scores of girl personas on TikTok just a marketing campaign? Let’s do the (girl) math.
Sliding into the Future: A Reading List on Snowsports
Pointless elitism, or an urgent dress rehearsal for the climate crisis?
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