Our sponsor this week is AlchemyAPI, the world's most popular natural language processing service.

AlchemyAPI is pioneering the ability for computers to understand human language and vision. In layman's terms: it's a tool that makes it super easy to deal with huge amounts of data. And that makes it ideal for large media companies. With its capacity for real-time text analysis and computer vision, AlchemyAPI helps customers transform vast amounts of unstructured data—images, documents, tweets, photos and more—into actions that drive their businesses.

Try AlchemyAPI absolutely free or take a tour and see what it can do for your site.

Our sponsor this week is Aeon, a great new digital magazine covering ideas and culture. Aeon publishes an original essay every weekday, several of which have been picked for Longform. Here are three recent favorites:

Spaced Out, by Greg Klerkx
Living in space was meant to be our next evolutionary step. What happened to the dream of the final frontier?

There’s an App for That, by John-Paul Flintoff
What to eat, when to meditate and whether to call your parents: can self-monitoring tools make a difference?

This Is Humankind, by Polina Aronson
If my grandfather could survive the Siege of Leningrad and still distinguish between a German and a Nazi, so can I.

Read those stories and more at aeonmagazine.com.

Our sponsor this week is Little Failure, the new memoir by Gary Shteyngart. Already a New York Times bestseller, Little Failure tells the story of Shteyngart's American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels epic and intimate and distinctly his own.

Mary Karr called Little Failure "a memoir for the ages." The Millions called Shteyngart the "Chekhov-Roth-Apatow of Queens." And Nathan Eglander, responding to the book's aching honesty, said "Dr. Freud would be proud."

Buy it today or read an exclusive excerpt on Longform.

Our sponsor this week is The Second Machine Age, the New York Times bestseller that Kevin Kelly calls "the best explanation of the technology revolution yet written."

From Google's autonomous cars to machines that can diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors, MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee—two thinkers at the forefront of their field—reveal the forces driving the reinvention of our lives and our economy. Drawing on years of research and up-to-the-minute trends, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies for survival and offer a new path to prosperity.

A fundamentally optimistic book, The Second Machine Age will alter how you think about issues of technological, societal, and economic progress.

Buy your copy today:

Amazon • Barnes & Noble • iBookstore • Indiebound • Powell's

Our sponsor this week is a fantastic new book from Longform regular Michael Paterniti, The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese. Paterniti spent years visiting a picturesque Spanish village, unearthing a remarkable story of secrets, murder plots, blood fueds and, yes, a very tasty piece of cheese.

George Saunders called The Telling Room "a wild and amazing ride." Susan Orlean said it was "a marvelous tale and a joyful read." We say it's excellent. And it's out today.

Read an Excerpt

Buy the Book:</a></em>
Amazon • Barnes & Noble • Powell's • Kindle • iBookstore