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Enjoy the best longform journalism. Every Sunday.

The long, noble and stinky quest to make human shit useful by Phoebe Braithwaite for Wired UK

 

The week's best reads, carefully curated by Don Van Natta Jr. and Jacob Feldman. This week's guest editor is Jacqui Shine.

 

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      Brighten Our Sunday!

   SUNDAY — August 5, 2018   

EDITORS’ NOTE: Happy Sunday! Today we're thrilled to have brought in writer and historian Jacqui Shine as this week's guest editor.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The AtlanticSlateThe Awl, the Lapham’s Quarterly blog, Pacific Standard, the Chicago ReaderThe SunNew York Magazine's Vulture, the Boston ReviewThe Toast, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Longreads, the New RepublicMen's Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Her story on the history of the New York Times' Style Section was nominated for a 2015 Mirror Award for excellence in media industry reporting. She was a Nonfiction Scholar at the 2014 Virginia Quarterly Review Writers’ Conference; she also reads manuscripts for the magazine. She was awarded a 2015 Ragdale Foundation residency, and she has taught and read at the Chautauqua Institution, the Dikeou Collection, and the late, lamented Bad Advice from Bad Women series.

She holds a freshly inked Ph.D. in U.S. history from UC Berkeley. Her dissertation tells the story of how American policing invented itself through popular culture; one of her friends called it "surprisingly enjoyable"! She's also a graduate of the nonfiction writing program at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. She lives in Chicago. Her earliest career influences were Nick News with Linda Ellerbee and Harriet the Spy. 

And now, the newsletter is hers!

 

 

Hi, good people! 

This Sunday Long Read is front-loaded with culture writing and cultural history, because these are my preoccupations. It’s a weird time to be doing this work, honestly, because cultural reporting is not what we grab on the way out of this burning house. But maybe it should be. 

I think writing and thinking about culture (in the broadest terms) is a profoundly important and valuable practice in society, for many reasons. It’s easy to discount culture writing as frivolous or less relevant or less important than other kinds of writing (e.g. “hard journalism,” lol). People argue that it tells us less about the world we live in, that it offers fewer vital questions or answers, that it is insufficient for documenting the things we witness. The appeal of such thinking may be defensive. It protects us from having to acknowledge that words—other, better, more substantive or serious words—aren’t always enough, either. As Jean-Paul Sartre put it, “For a long while I treated my pen as my sword: now I realize how helpless we are.” (DO NOT WORRY, I have not read any Sartre besides this quotation.) I think we’re all touched by the vertigo of this helplessness these days, at least sometimes. 

I’m still working this thought out, so bear with me, but: I believe that when we treat writing and thinking about our cultural lives as less relevant, we actually cede ground to those who wish to weaponize culture in order to seize power. We endanger so much of what matters to us as a society. It’s a kind of alienation from our shared values and agreements. 

I generally have mixed feelings about the efficacy of this particular historical comparison as a way of understanding what’s happening around us today, but many people find it useful, so we’ll go with it. Bluntly, Adolf Hitler’s rise to power was abetted in part by reshaping arts and culture in line with fascist ideologies. The film director and propagandist Leni Riefenstahl was a pivotal figure in the Third Reich. Maybe this is overly dramatic, but it’s also worth remembering that a certain former White House chief strategist and man of many shirts made a go of it in Hollywood in an earlier life. 

So! That said, here’s some of what I read and loved this week. Many of these stories are about culture, but they are also stories about politics, economics, the arts, science and medicine, and social geography. They are just as concerned with the Big Questions we’re facing about the future of American democracy, press freedom, and the alarming rise of reactionary politics as any of the other powerful stories we’ve devoured lately.

Thank you to Don & Jacob for handing over the keys so I can drive this newsletter like I stole it.  I told them we were gonna get weird this week, and I hope I’ve delivered. I also wanted to tell you that beginning next month, I’ll be living my highest purpose and recapping the Murphy Brown reboot for Vulture. Please join me!! I have so many Important Thoughts to share!!

JACQUI'S FAVORITE READ:
 

   time.com
My True South
By Jesmyn Ward 
 (~10 minutes)

 

For Time’s special issue on the American South, Ward reflects on what brought her home to Mississippi and the hope, despair, joy, and struggle that keep her there. This is a gorgeous, clear-eyed, and powerful essay about the ways in which “this illness of racial violence and oppression affects all of us, not just in Mississippi, but throughout the South, America and abroad.” But, she adds, in Mississippi we also see a way forward: “Even as the South remains troubled by its past, there are people here who are fighting so it can find its way to a healthier future, never forgetting the lessons of its long, brutal history, ever present, ever instructive.”​

   deadspin.com
Nikolai Volkoff, Cold Warrior And American Dreamer, Is Dead
By Dave McKenna
 (~10 minutes)

 

Subverting Communism by cashing in on a role as a Soviet villain is such an American story, isn’t it?  

 


   thedailybeast.com
How an ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions
By Jeff Maysh
 (~40 minutes)

 

Come to think of it, a crooked cop scamming a major corporation out of millions through a contest based upon an unabashedly capitalist board game is a pretty American story, too! (So’s the delicious unraveling of the whole thing through the application of FBI shoe leather.) Anyway, what I'm really trying to say is that one man(afort)’s $15,000 ostrich jacket is another man’s order of the entire menu at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.

 


   newyorker.com
The Decline and Fall of Diet Coke and the Power Generation That Loved It
By Nathan Heller

 (~5 minutes)


I’m a Millennial and therefore far, far removed from anything resembling a “power generation,” but, as they say on Twitter, I feel personally attacked

 
 

   theringer.com
The Couch Jump That Rocked Hollywood
By Kate Knibbs

 (~15 minutes)

Here, Kate Knibbs argues that Tom Cruise's iconic 2005 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show marked a crucial moment in the development of the viral internet. This early memetic moment portended a structural economic shift away from Hollywood gatekeeping and toward "a more democratic and chaotic media landscape,” fueled by the simultaneous rise of gossip blogs, the launch of YouTube, and "a shift in how celebrity freakouts were covered.” Knibbs argues that Cruise eventually recovered; for another perspective, revisit SLR contributing editor Anne Helen Petersen’s 2015 analysis of the effect the episode had on his career.

 
 

   cabinetmagazine.org
Cinematic Airs
By Christopher Turner  
 (~15 minutes)

First there was the talkie, and then there was the smellie. In the 1950s, Hollywood execs, worried about the effect the rise of television would have on movie-going efforts, took a chance on Smell-O-Vision. The cast of characters includes Aldous Huxley, Gypsy Rose Lee, Elizabeth Taylor, and a "world-renowned osmologist" who lost it all in pursuit of his dream. 

 
 

   wired.co.uk
The long, noble and stinky quest to make human shit useful
By Phoebe Braithwaite
 (~10 minutes)

On the subject of smells: When I took my qualifying exams in graduate school years ago, one of my reading lists focused on 19th century urban history. This meant, among other things, that I read a lot about city sanitation, sewage, and public health, and I delighted in the long history of man’s effort to monetize poop. The fact that we are still trying to put poop to higher purposes strikes me as a daffy and charming example of our conviction that we can overcome human limitations through ingenuity and hope.  Also, because it’s 2018, something something this shitty world something something. 

 
 

   polygon.com
Twitter Courted Comedians, Then the Opposition
By Julia Alexander 
 (~15 minutes)

 

Speaking of shitshows.

 
 

   chicagomag.com
The World’s Most Peculiar Company
By Nick Greene
 (~20 minutes)

 

Another one for the Quixotic Enterprises file (which is my favorite file): this delightful story about the enduring presence of the Hammacher Schlemmer retail catalog in our mailboxes slash lives.

 
 

   newyorker.com
The Devastating Resonances of Yiddish Songs Recovered from the Second World War
By Amanda Petrusich 
 (~5 minutes)

 

A Yiddish studies professor and a musician have revived the astonishing work of folklorist Moisei Beregovsky, who worked during World War II to document the hundreds of Yiddish songs composed by men, women, and children that addressed "the deep insanity and terror of life during the Holocaust." New Yorker music critic Petrusich details the history of the songs and the making of an anthology of new recordings released last year; you can listen to a few of the songs on Soundcloud

Bonus: Here’s another story of the fugitive reach of music under repressive circumstances.

 


   narrative.ly
This Black Woman Was Once the Biggest Star in Jazz. Here’s Why You’ve Never Heard of Her.
By Lorissa Rinehart
 (~15 minutes)


Path-breaking jazz pianist Hazel Scott spent her career breaking barriers in music and entertainment, refusing to play segregated nightclubs and to take on demeaning stereotypical roles in films. She was at the height of her powers when the House Un-American Activities Committee accused her of being a Communist sympathizer in 1950: She’d recently become the first Black woman to host her own television show. She was one of dozens of artists whose careers were ruined by HUAC’s far-reaching, paranoia-fueled investigations.  This story is a powerful reminder that the fact that you or I haven’t heard a story doesn’t mean it’s been forgotten. It means we haven’t been listening to the people trying to tell it. 
 



   npr.org
THE #SundayLR LIST: The 200 Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women+
By NPR Music
 (~10 minutes)


The latest entry in NPR Music's Turning the Tables series, "an ongoing project dedicated to recasting the popular music canon in more inclusive ways." (They note, “The use of the term "Women+" is part of our engagement in a movement to recognize a wide spectrum of gender identities coming to greater light in the 21st century.”)

 
 

   longreads.com
A Woman’s Work: The Art of the Day Job
By Carolita Johnson
 (~25 minutes)

 

Carolita Johnson is a cartoonist whose work frequently appears in the New Yorker, but I’ve admired her illustrated essays since first encountering them at the late, lamented Hairpin years ago. Recently, she has begun a series of essays that take account, literally and figuratively, of the life she’s built for herself and how it fits into the larger gendered economics of our society. This, the second in that series, is a personal history of her succession of improbable day jobs (improbable to me, Jacqui, a person who can barely even handle the fact that I actually became a writer). The first entry, a reckoning with the ways in which partnership exacts uneven costs for women and men, is really lovely, too.

 
 

   theparisreview.org
Like You Know Your Own Bones
By Crystal Hana Kim
 (~10 minutes)

 

This is a beautiful reflection on family, history, and memory—deep memory, sense memory—and the process of coming to understand that “that who I am does not end with my body, my bones.” 

 
 

   lithub.com
All About My Mother: Brandon Taylor on Love, Rage, and Family
By Brandon Taylor
 (~20 minutes)

 

I loved what Brandon says about being drawn to fiction because it allowed him to make sense of his family’s confusing truths and falsehoods in a way he felt non-fiction couldn’t. A similar impulse is what drove me to the opposite: I become a historian and a non-fiction writer.  Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way—and, in turn, creates its own chroniclers. 

 
 

   oxfordamerican.org
Fugitive Plateau
By Lisa Coffman 
 (~25 minutes)

 

Another gorgeous essay about past, place, and personal history in the American South. As she investigates a bitter conflict that culminated in mob violence in 1930s Appalachia, "I know the tragedy begins in something that I have inherited a love for: the peculiar character of the land itself."

  
 

   miamiherald.com
Caretakers: The Final Resting Place of Miami's Black Pioneers
By Carl Juste & C.W. Griffin, with Leonard Pitts, Jr., Andres Viglucci, and Ellis Rua
 (~20 minutes)

 

And here’s another piece on the subject of what we remember and how we forget. This terrific package excerpts the work of the Herald's Carl Juste and photographer C.W. Griffin, who have produced a photographic essay and documentary video on the restoration of Lincoln Park Memorial Cemetery, a neglected burial park in Miami's historic Brownsville neighborhood. Their work is part of the Coral Gables Museum’s extraordinary new show Sacred Ground, which details the organization’s commitment to restoring and reviving the cemetery.  Leonard Pitts, Jr., Andres Viglucci, and Ellis Rua have contributed additional commentary and reporting; don't miss Rua's portrait of the man who has dedicated his days to serving as the cemetery's "volunteer caregiver, its protector, its savior."

 
 

   theguardian.com
Black Power Behind Bars
By Ed Pilkington 

 (~30 minutes)

 

As Ed pithily put it on Twitter, “19 black radicals are still in prison 40, 50 years after they were arrested in the black liberation struggle. I've been talking to many of them.” He’s the senior reporter at Guardian US; this week, he’s published a package of a half-dozen of the stories that have resulted from two years of reporting. These portraits are sensitive, unflinching, and reflective. They raise provocative questions about institutional racism, mass incarceration, and the justice system—ones we cannot continue to defer. I recommend starting with this piece, but much, much more follows.

 


   zocalopublicsquare.org
Why Hawai’i Has America’s Lowest Rates of Gun Violence
By Colin Moore 
 (~5 minutes)

 

"It’s a combination of relative prosperity, isolation, unique culture—and tough laws."

 


   dmagazine.com
Augustine Frizzell’s Surefire Way to Make Funny Movies
By Zac Crain 
 (~25 minutes)

 

This piece wins dek of the week: “First you drop out of high school and start doing drugs. The rest sort of figures itself out after you unexpectedly get pregnant.” And now I vow to watch anything Augustine Frizzell ever makes.

Bonus links: The New Yorker’s Ariel Levy on filmmaker Nicole Holofcener and, from last month, writer Ottessa Moshfegh.

 


   texasmonthly.com
The High-Stakes Race to Create the World’s First Artificial Heart
By Mimi Swartz
 (~15 minutes)

 

Among other things, this is a terrific character study of Houston surgeon Bud Frazier. My favorite part might be this description of his accent: “Bud had also maintained an authentic West Texas drawl, sounding to some like LBJ on quaaludes.”

Bonus links: Jeanne Marie Laskas’s terrific 2014 GQ story about Richard Norris, who received a full face transplant in 2012, which also reminds me of this recent obituary for Milton T. Edgerton, a plastic surgeon who helped lead the way in establishing the importance of gender-affirming surgeries for transgender people & who also completed a pioneering facial reconstruction that changed the life of a teenage girl.

 


   bbc.com
Why Local US Newspapers Are Sounding the Alarm
By Taylor Kate Brown
 (~10 minutes)

 

If you want to understand more about what's at risk when a local newspaper is on the ropes, look no further than Boulder, CO and the Daily Camera. 

 


   nytimes.com
THE REMEMBRANCE: MARYON P. ALLEN
By William McDonald 
 (~5 minutes)

 

She was one of only two women to represent Alabama in the United States Senate. Or, as she once said, “I want it chiseled on my tombstone that this 5-foot-2 woman who weighs 110 pounds kept George Corley Wallace out of the Senate.”

 

   nytimes.com
THE REMEMBRANCE: DORIS ARNDT
By Melissa Eddy 
 (~5 minutes)

 

She began training polar bears and big cats when she was sixteen years old, people. 

   nytimes.com
THE REMEMBRANCE: SISTER MAUREEN TURLISH
By Sam Roberts 
 (~5 minutes)

 

She was “a tenacious advocate for survivors of childhood sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergymen.”

I couldn’t resist the opportunity to mention this trio of bold women. 

THE FAN LETTER: 

 

    nytimes.com
Letter of Recommendation: Dead Malls
By Kate Folk 
 (~5 minutes)


I love so many things about this, and I only slightly resent the hours I’ve lost to exploring deadmalls.com since reading it. 
 

THE MAP OF THE WEEK: 

 

    nytimes.com
A Census Question that Could Change How Power Is Divided in America
By Emily Badger
 (~5 minutes)


The Upshot’s Emily Badger maps the implications of the troubling new question the Trump administration has added to the 2020 Census: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?

And if you haven’t seen “An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2016 Presidential Election” yet, well, I apologize for the hours you are about to lose. Cross-reference with deadmalls.com for further pedantic pleasure!!!

JACK SHAFER'S CLASSIC READ: 

 

        Nugget
The Fight: Patterson Vs. Liston (1963)
By James Baldwin 
 (~25 minutes)


Seated between Norman Mailer and Ben Hecht, James Baldwin witnessed the two-minute and six-second blowout between heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson and beast-mode challenger Sonny Liston at Chicago's Comiskey Park in 1962. The piece is written almost entirely in prelude. Baldwin, a boxing novice, enlisted Gay Talese as his guide to the scene, and he crafted character studies of the two fighters rather than detailing the punches of the fight. Nobody wanted Liston to win, even the "Negroes," writes Baldwin, who placed a big bet on Patterson and lost. This week marked the centenary of Baldwin's birth.

Jack Shafer writes about media for Politico.

JODY AVIRGAN'S SUNDAY POD: 

 

   abc.net.au
SOAP Presents


Sum Of All Parts is a great Australian podcast about numbers in all their weird glory. But even a podcaster as hard-working as Joel Werner needs some time off, and this summer he’s doing a very cool thing by showcasing other podcasts each week. It’s been a great exercise in discovery — you can hear a lot of new stuff all within one convenient feed. Maybe you’ll find your favorite new show. And then go back and listen to all the SOAP archives as well.

Jody Avirgan is the host of FiveThirtyEight's politics podcast and is heading up the new "30 for 30" podcast documentary series from ESPN.

THE SLR POD:


Next up on The Sunday Long Read Podcast is author Jo Piazza. Here are a few of our recent favorites.  

Rachel Syme
Brett Michel Dykes
Shea Serrano
Glynnis MacNicol

Subscribe to The Sunday Long Read Podcast today!

LEDE OF THE WEEK:
Nikolai Volkoff, Cold Warrior And American Dreamer, Is Dead

Lots of wrestlers cosplayed as commies during the Cold War.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

All About My Mother: Brandon Taylor on Love, Rage, and Family

“What was I to do with essays and their order, their tidiness, their directness, when the only things I knew had to do with obscurity and the indirect. Take love, for another example, which to some people is expressed via touch or via words or some other means of affection. In my family, love was the slow accumulation of moments in which I was not subjected to great harm. What is love if you get it secondhand? Is it a fact or merely a detail?”

-Brandon Taylor 

KICKER OF THE WEEK:

The Black Panthers still in prison After 46 years, will they ever be set free?

“Aren’t prisons there to rehabilitate?” she asked with a tearful laugh. “He’s been there for 46 years. How much time does it take to be rehabilitated?” 

LAST WEEK'S MOST READ STORIES:


Judgment Days
By Stephanie McCrummen

 

The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage
By Doug Bock Clark

Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide
By Skip Hollandsworth 

   THE LONG VIEW   

   theringer.com
Ringer PhD: How does Netflix make money?
By Victor Luckerson (writer and reporter) and Sean Fennessey (narrator)
 (~10 minutes)

 

I’ve been asking this question for years and The Ringer answers it with sharp writing, smart graphics and a deft use of pop culture clips. One of the better explainers I’ve come across.

The Long View is curated by Justine Gubar, former Vice President, News Narratives at Fusion and the author of Fanaticus: Mischief and Madness in the Modern Sports Fan. Reach out to Justine at justinegubar@mac.com if you have a suggestion for next week's long view.

   THE SUNDAY STILL   

ELECTION DAY

Covering the July 30 presidential election in Zimbabwe, photographer Luis Tato captured the historic moment in a dramatic image that resembled an Old Masters painting. The Spanish-born stringer, shooting for Agence France-Presse (AFP), used the light of a lantern to reflect the mix of emotions on the faces of observers gathered at a polling station outside the country’s capital, Harare. The occasion marked the first time since 1980 that ballots offered new presidential candidates other than Robert Mugabe, deposed in a military coup last year. Tato later hit the downtown streets to document violent protests amid election-rigging accusations as armed police and soldiers fired on stone-throwing crowds, killing at least three. 

Patrick Farrell, the curator of The Sunday Still, is the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winner for Breaking News Photography for The Miami Herald, where he has worked since 1987. He is currently a Distinguished Executive-in-Residence in Emerson College’s Department of Journalism.

   THE SUNDAY COVER  

   kenyonreview.org
July/August 2018 issue

RYAN RODENBERG'S SUNDAY ESOTERICA


In a new academic paper, Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler, and Toby Ord probe one of the most enduring questions ever: Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?  In "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox," the three researchers offer a qualified answer of "no."  From the paper's abstract: "we find a substantial... probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it." 

The 19-page paper can be found here​

Ryan works as a professor at Florida State University, where he teaches research methods and sports law.  He writes a lot of academic articles and some mainstream pieces too.

TIM TORKILDSON'S SUNDAY LIMERICK


From The Washington Post:
"The Treasury Department is considering a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans through a change that would not need approval from Congress, officials said, a move that would follow a package of tax cuts last year that also benefited the super-rich." 

From Tim:
Consider the poor plutocrat,
whose upkeep on his black silk hat
and stable of mares
and sunk Facebook shares
means giving up his baccarat.   


Tim Torkildson is a retired circus clown who fiddles with rhyme. All his verses can be found at Tim's Clown Alley.

THE SUNDAY LONG PLAY

 

Lucero - Among the Ghosts (iTunes | Spotify)

 

Over the past couple decades, Memphis-based rock band Lucero has evolved from a garage-burning roots-rock crew into a brassy rock 'n' soul outfit. But the excellent, newly released Among the Ghosts suggests the band hasn't forgotten where it came from. Lead singer Ben Nichols' voice, as smooth as a freshly busted pile of jagged rock in the local quarry, remains the group's hearty signature, though each player shows his instrumental might with authority.

For the most part, the Stax-style horns from the outfit's last few studio albums are absent, replaced with a confident range of tempos and styles. With a hip-shaking bass line, "Everything Has Changed" feels like an R&B number more than it sounds like one, while the moody "Long Way Back Home" bursts with vivid western gothic flourishes. The ominous, deliberately-paced "Back to the Night" goes dark with a spoken word part from the stellar actor Michael Shannon, who has appeared in a number of films directed by Ben's brother, Jeff Nichols.

When a band is 20 years into its career, growth is necessary, but tricky. Among the Ghosts marches the band forward by carefully inching back towards its early hardscrabble sound armed with a few recently learned lessons. 

Kelly Dearmore is the Music Critic for the Dallas Morning News. Yes, he's heard your son's demo tape, and he thinks it's fantastic. 

   THE SU♬DAY SOU♬DTRACK   

Take Five
By Dave Brubeck  

   THE SUND&Y AMPERS&ND   

The Sunday Ampersand is chosen by Nick Aster. Nick most recently served as founder of TriplePundit.com, a leading publication focused on sustainability and corporate social responsibility.

   THE LAST LAUGH  

    mcsweeneys.net
To Every Male Author Who Has Ever Said Writing a Book Was Like Having a Baby, Then Laughed at What a Clever Comparison It Was
By Anne Lovering Rounds

 (~5 minutes)

Did your book manuscript ever kick you from inside your own body?

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Founder, Curator: Don Van Natta Jr.
Producer, Curator: Jacob Feldman
Producer, Curator: Étienne Lajoie
Senior Recycling Editor: Jack Shafer
Senior Long View Editor: Justine Gubar
Senior Photo Editor: Patrick Farrell
Senior Music Editor: Kelly Dearmore
Senior Limerick Editor: Tim Torkildson
Senior Podcast Editor: Jody Avirgan
Senior Editor of Esoterica: Ryan M. Rodenberg

Digital Team: Nation Hahn, Nickolaus Hines, Megan McDonell, Alexa Steinberg
Podcast Team: Peter Bailey-Wells, Cary Barbor, Julian McKenzie, Jonathan Yales
Campus Editor: Peter Warren

Contributing Editors: Bruce Arthur, Shaun Assael, Nick Aster, Alex Belth, Sara J. Benincasa, Sara Blask, Greg Bishop, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Maria Bustillos, Chris Cillizza, Anna Katherine Clemmons, Rich Cohen, Pam Colloff, Maureen Dowd, Charles Duhigg, Brett Michael Dykes, Geoff Edgers, Lea Goldman, Michael N. Graff, Maggie Haberman, Reyhan Harmanci, Virginia Heffernan, Matthew Hiltzik, Jena Janovy, Bomani Jones, Chris Jones, Peter Kafka, Paul Kix, Mina Kimes, Peter King, Michael Kruse, Tom Lamont, Chris Lehmann, Will Leitch, Glynnis MacNicol, Drew Magary, Erik Malinowski, Jonathan Martin, Betsy Fischer Martin, Ana Menendez, Kevin Merida, Heidi N. Moore, Eric Neel, Joe Nocera, Ashley R. Parker, Anne Helen Petersen, Jo Piazza, Joe Posnanski, S.L. Price, Jennifer Romolini, Julia Rubin, Albert Samaha, Bruce Schoenfeld, Michael Schur, Joe Sexton, Jacqui Shine, Rachel Sklar, Dan Shanoff, Ben Smith, Matt Sullivan, Wright Thompson, Pablo Torre, Kevin Van Valkenburg, John A. Walsh, Seth Wickersham and Karen Wickre.


Header Image: Oivind Hovland


You can read more about our staff, and contact us (we'd love to hear from you!) on our website: SundayLongRead.com. Help pick next week's selections by tweeting us your favorite stories with #SundayLR.

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