Wheel in the Sky
On a 1955 ferris wheel accident.
On a 1955 ferris wheel accident.
Robert Draper Texas Monthly Oct 2005 25min Permalink
A profile of Barry Bonds published as the steroid talk intensified.
David Grann New York Times Magazine Sep 2002 30min Permalink
On the dying city of Port Arthur, Texas, and one man’s fight to save it.
Howie Kahn O Magazine Sep 2011 20min Permalink
In 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy and held the entire American diplomatic mission hostage for fifteen months. Twenty-five years later, the students reflected on their actions, many with regret.
Mark Bowden The Atlantic Dec 2004 35min Permalink
On the tortured afterlives of cast members.
Andy Dehnart Playboy Aug 2011 25min Permalink
Inside the cult appeal of the hit convenience mart/gas station Wawa.
Don Steinberg Philadelphia Magazine Jun 2011 15min Permalink
A profile of Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Workweek.
Rebecca Mead New Yorker Sep 2011 20min Permalink
A profile of a serial sex offender:
This is a story about how hard it is to be good—or, rather, how hard it is to be good once you’ve been bad; how hard it is to be fixed once you’ve been broken; how hard it is to be straight once you’ve been bent. It is about a scary man who is trying very hard not to be scary anymore and yet who still manages to scare not only the people who have good reason to be afraid of him but even occasionally himself. It is about sex, and how little we know about its mysteries; about the human heart, and how futilely we have responded—with silence, with therapy, with the law and even with the sacred Constitution—to its dark challenge. It is about what happens when we, as a society, no longer trust our futile responses and admit that we have no idea what to do with a guy like Mitchell Gaff.
Excerpted from the author’s biography of mathematician Simon Phillips Norton.
Alexander Masters The Guardian Aug 2011 Permalink
Madrid, 1937:
Then for a moment it stops. An old woman, with a shawl over her shoulders, holding a terrified thin little boy by the hand, runs out into the square. You know what she is thinking: she is thinking she must get the child home, you are always safer in your own place, with the things you know. Somehow you do not believe you can get killed when you are sitting in your own parlor, you never think that. She is in the middle of the square when the next one comes.
Martha Gellhorn Collier's Jul 1937 15min Permalink
A look at the artists and writers who drive for a New York cab company. The story that inspired Taxi.
Mark Jacobson New York Sep 1975 15min Permalink
As “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” comes to an end, a conversation with gay servicemen past and present.
Chris Heath GQ Sep 2011 35min Permalink
Analysis of the trial from future Supreme Court justice.
Felix Frankfurter The Atlantic Mar 1927 1h15min Permalink
When the greatest players in the world go head-to-head, things can get downright angsty.
Gerald Marzorati New York Times Magazine Aug 2011 20min Permalink
Adapted from a new biography of Jane Fonda.
Patricia Bosworth Vanity Fair Sep 2011 30min Permalink
How is Canada’s “post-AIDS” generation coping? Not that well.
[I]n some ways we are still hopelessly lost. A generation of men who could have been our mentors was decimated. The only thing we learned from observing them was to ruthlessly identify “AIDS face,” that skeletal appearance the early HIV drugs wrought on patients by wasting away their bodily tissues. But those faces grow more rare each day.
Michael Harris The Walrus Sep 2011 20min Permalink
"Here is what Jack Shafer is," says Erik Wemple, who blogs about the media for washingtonpost.com. "Obviously, very talented, tremendously original and highly informed. But more important, he is utterly uncorrupted by friendship, money, power, anything. He is ruthless with people he doesn't know, but what is impressive is how ruthless he can be with the people he knows. He's impervious to outside influence, and it's a glorious thing to watch."
Mark Lisheron American Journalism Review Aug 2011 10min Permalink
Inside the dynastic war between the heirs to rulership of the largest Hasidic sect in the world. The prize – all of Hasidic Williamsburg – may prove to be ungovernable.
Michael Powell New York May 2006 15min Permalink
The web has revolutionized communications and commerce, but what does it mean for art?
Kazys Varnelis, Lauren Cornell Frieze Magazine Sep 2011 10min Permalink
On the endless quest to predict earthquakes.
Kevin Krajick Smithsonian Mar 2005 1h45min Permalink
An abridged history of violence in "America's first suburb."
Note: Elon Green is a contributing editor to Longform.
Elon Green The Awl Aug 2011 10min Permalink
In the first seven months of 2011, 94,000 people were sued for illegally downloading porn. Not one case has been decided by a jury. On the industry’s new strategy to make downloaders pay.
Keegan Hamilton Seattle Weekly Aug 2011 Permalink
21,000 words on the watchers and watched.
At work with the scientists standing on the precipice of a grand unified theory of the universe. Or failure.
Tyler Cabot Esquire Nov 2006 15min Permalink
On the culture of plastic surgery in Los Angeles, and how the reporter’s life changed when she got a pair of fake boobs.
Amy Wallace Los Angeles Jan 2002 20min Permalink