EDITORS’ NOTE: Happy Sunday and welcome to December! Two quick notes before we get to the intros this week...
1. As we prepare for 2019, we are seeking a title sponsor who would like to engage with our dedicated readers and support longform journalism. Please reply directly to this email if you are interested or if you know of anyone who might be interested.
2. In last week's member special SLR (superbly guest-edited by Maria Bustillos), we highlighted an essay from SLR contributor Alex Belth. One of the most popular stories from that issue, we wanted to share the brave, personal story for everyone now that we're back with a regularly scheduled edition.
This week, we've got a special duo of guest editors to introduce. Betsy Fischer Martin is an Emmy-winning journalist and former TV news executive, spending 23 years at NBC News and co-hosting the "Masters in Politics" podcast during the 2016 presidential election. She is currently the Executive Director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University—here's their newsletter!
Jonathan Martin is a national political correspondent for The New York Times. Before joining The Times, he had served as senior political writer for Politico since its inception in 2007. This year, he's written great stuff on a throwback campaign in Tennessee and what it means to be a Democrat.
They've gathered a great list this week, and stayed on the clock to include a worthy tribute to President George H.W. Bush first. Enjoy!
What a treat it is to take the SLR wheel for a week. We have both organized much of our professional lives around Sunday. For Betsy, the day used to come early: she would get up at 4 AM every Sunday to produce “Meet the Press.” For Jonathan, Sundays mean the Sunday New York Times, and his weeks still often revolve around preparing stories to run in that bulging blue bag that, if we are doing it right, enriches the weekends of so many readers.
But because of early deadlines for the Sunday beast (print!) and the desire to get Sunday stories up early (digital!), Jonathan’s work is usually done by this morning. And having left the TV business a few years ago, Betsy’s Sunday mornings are often equally serene. So we, like you, love having this time to dig into what gems Don and Jacob have found during the course of the week.
We first tried to organize our own reads around some of our most favorite things—politics, travel and food—and we’ve added in plenty of lagniappe as well. But first … we start with a few pieces on the life of former President George Herbert Walker Bush, who died late Friday at 94.
The 10,207-word New York Times obituary by Jonathan’s colleague, Adam Nagourney, is masterful. Adam has been working on this for years. In fact, Jonathan recalls talking to him about it when they both covered an RNC meeting in Honolulu (yes, it was quite the junket) back in January of 2010. Adam captures the noblesse oblige—he liked to frame his public service as an answer to the call to duty, like the one that had sent him over the Pacific and into enemy fire as a 20-year-old—and offers much deft analysis. “If Mr. Bush’s embrace helped scrub Mr. Clinton’s reputation of some of its tawdrier aspects, Mr. Clinton helped transform Mr. Bush’s image from that of a vanquished one-term president who had never fully escaped the shadow of his popular predecessor, Reagan, to one of a respected elder statesman,” Nagourney writes of the friendship between the 41st and 42nd presidents.
Meacham, the former Newsweek editor and Bush biographer, writes in an op-ed that Bush was “the embodiment of a postwar era of consensus that, in our time, seems as remote as Agincourt” and that he deserves “closer historical consideration, for his life offers an object lesson in the best that politics, which is inherently imperfect, can be.”
Bush never wrote a true memoir, but Lozada, one of our favorite Sunday reads, pieces together what could have been, via all that Bush did put down on paper over the years.
Naftali, a historian and the former head of the Nixon Library, argues that Bush was an enormously underrated one-term president who “brought the perfect mix of pragmatism, realism, and good sense to three huge challenges—the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the collapse of Reaganomics at home, and the rabid ambitions of Saddam Hussein in the Middle East.” Unlike other colonial empires—the French, the British, the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the Belgian—that saw their demise in 20th century, the Soviet Union disbanded without bloodshed in the early 1990s.
Amid all the tributes this weekend to 41, David Greenberg highlights the less savory parts of the former president's legacy to argue that he ought not be so exalted.
One of two shattering pieces on Betsy’s home state that caught our eye this week. The high school that produced those viral videos of African-American students being accepted to Ivy League colleges turns out to have falsified transcripts, made up student accomplishments and abused students.
This is an astonishing, and revolting, piece of journalism. And the day after it was posted this week, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who was the federal prosecutor who oversaw Jeffrey Epstein’s unusually lenient prosecution, was publicly eliminated from the list of potential successors of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
California Republicans have been shut out from statewide office for a decade, but their troubles drifted down the ballot this year: they lost seven House seats, many of them in Orange County.
Ignatius is one of the country’s best-sourced columnists and he breaks new ground on the struggle for power in the kingdom and how the byzantine feud there led to the murder of his Washington Post colleague, Jamal Khashoggi.
Draper has turned out an array of superb magazine pieces on House politics in recent years and this is one of the best. The on-the-record quotes from Pelosi about President Trump and her own base reflect the sort of blunt talk you’d expect from the daughter of a Baltimore political boss.
College Republican women at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill speak about being conservative on campus in the Trump era. Recalling bad Tinder matches and aggressive confrontations at mixers, the women discuss what it means to be what they termed “one of the most despised women in America.”
American: Chicago (ORD) to Northwest Florida Beaches (ECP) (home to Seaside and Watercolor)
Alitalia: Washington (IAD) to Rome (FCO)
Southwest: New York (LGA) to New Orleans (MSY)
There’s inevitably at least one really engrossing piece in every issue of Garden and Gun. And this piece on a multi-generation family of oystermen in Georgia is really well-turned.
The other story from Louisiana that was infuriating. New Iberia, best known beyond Louisiana as the home of Tabasco Sauce, has a wrenching history of racial injustice.
It seems like few weeks go by without fresh #metoo reporting and this detailed new account of how the famed CBS News executive sought to evade accountability is riveting.
George Bush had been fading in the last few days. He had not gotten out of bed, he had stopped eating and he was mostly sleeping. For a man who had defied death multiple times over the years, it seemed that the moment might finally be arriving.
His longtime friend and former secretary of state, James A. Baker III, arrived at his Houston home on Friday morning to check on him.
Mr. Bush suddenly grew alert, his eyes wide open. “Where are we going, Bake?” he asked.
Mr. Landry slipped into the familiar call-and-response with his students.
“In English,” he commanded them.
“I love you,” they said.
“In Mandarin,” he yelled.
“Wo ai ni,” they said.
“In Russian!”
“Ya lyublyu vas!”
“In Tagalog!”
“Mahal kita!”
“In Mike-a-nese!”
“Kneel,” they shouted.
“In Mike-a-nese!”
“Kneel!”
In the opening paragraphs of Richard Ben Cramer's story on the origins of George H.W. Bush, Bush gets gunned down out of the sky by the Japanese. And it just gets better.
Classic Read curator Jack Shafer writes about media for Politico.
Displayed on the nation’s front pages and shared virally by both sides of the immigration debate, the top trending photo this past week showed Honduran mom Maria Meza in a Disney T-shirt fleeing tear gas at the U.S.-Mexico border with her twin daughters, one barefoot, the other in an uncovered diaper. Reuters photographer Kim Kyung-Hoon captured the frantic, chaotic moment. It was the photo’s content – not the composition or technical elements – that demanded the world’s attention. More than video coverage or print stories, the single image once again crystallized the most prominent wedge issue in America today.
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 Lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Media Management at the University of Miami School of Communication.
I’ll admit that I had some narrative quibbles with Missing Richard Simmons, but this new season from Dan Taberski (and his trusty producer Henry) really nails it. It’s got drama and mystery and great characters, but it’s also just more sure-footed and the ideas are fully fleshed out. All along I’ve been hearing “wait for episode 4, episode 4 will blow your mind.” That’s correct. It’s worth the investment.
Sunday Pod curator Jody Avirgan is the host of FiveThirtyEight's politics podcast and is heading up the new "30 for 30" podcast documentary series from ESPN.
This remarkable feature-length documentary came out several years ago but it was just made available for free on YouTube. “Everybody Street” is an exquisitely shot and edited tribute to the artistry of famous New York City street photographers.
The Long View curator Justine Gubar is the 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 so-called 'Watergate Roadmap' -- filed under seal on or around March 1, 1974 -- has now been released. The 62-page document formally titled "In Re Report and Recommendation of June 5, 1972 Grand Jury Concerning Transmission of Evidence to the House of Representatives" was put into the public domain by the National Archives upon the order of a federal judge in Washington, DC who was evaluating two lawsuits calling for the document's release. Penned by Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski, the document informed Congress about the status of the Watergate inquiry.
Sunday Esoterica curator Ryan Rodenberg 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.
A few days ago I went to a Nine Inch Nails concert. Trent Reznor was in fine, disturbing form and yada yada yada, it was a whale of a show. But it was the opening set from Scotland's alternative-rock trailblazing greats the Jesus and Mary Chain, that gave the night such an advantageous head start.
And luckily, I was there in time for the beginning of that opening set, as the band started off with perhaps its greatest, most beloved tune, 1985's "Just Like Honey." In the live setting, lead singer Jim Reid's vocals lacked the atmospheric reverb found on the recorded version of the song, but it offered a rich, beneficial contrast to the timelessly ethereal, dreamy guitar swirling behind him.
For many who missed the band during its '80s heyday, the song was given a new life in 2003, when it was perfectly placed at the end of director Sofia Coppola's rightfully acclaimed film Lost in Translation, starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. In that compelling closing scene, which has to rank as one of the finer movie endings of this current millennium, the song lends a yearning beauty to the main characters reluctant farewell.
The rest of the album is worthy of praise as well. And though the group often gets lumped into lists of great shoegaze bands, Psychocandy offers a diverse range of tempos and textures, betraying any easy categorization or historical revision.
Long Play curator 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.
This is our new occasional feature: The Sunday Long Thread. If there’s a Twitter thread you’d like to see featured in this space, please let us know editors@sundaylongread.com.
This is how I met President George H.W. Bush. He wrote me a fan later saying he loved one of my thrillers, and could I sign a copy? Of course, I sent him a book. When we finally met, he spent the first ten minutes trying to convince my wife that he invented the phrase “You da Man.”
She actually believed it — until Mrs. Bush started yelling: “Stop teasing the poor girl!” From there, I told him I was researching a book about the life of a former President.
He quickly invited me to spend a week in Houston, with unprecedented access to him and Mrs. Bush. What did I learn? That he was one of the most decent and honorable people I’d ever encountered. He loved his family, loved his sports, and believed deeply in the power of service.
I learned even more when I spoke to the Secret Service. Make no mistake, they don’t love everyone they protect. But President Bush? Over and over, they told the same story: That he always knew them by name, and always asked about their kids and families and hobbies.
He was the most powerful man in the world, but he always took time to treat you like a human being. Especially today, that level of kindness and class is a rare thing. It never left him. Over the years, we had so many adventures and laughs.
He invited me to a private lunch upstairs in the White House, and showed us everything from the secret passages to the Lincoln bedroom. But one of my most cherished memories of him? When I asked him about his plane crashing in WWII.
He was a 22-year-old pilot, yelling to his crew, signaling for them to bail out of the smoking plane. “Hit the silk! Hit the silk!“ He knew what would happen if they were captured: they’d be tortured and executed. The plane was a fireball, falling from the sky.
Still, he was determined to save his crewmen, John Delaney and Ted White. As the plane was going down, he turned it purposely to take the air pressure off the crew’s door. He did that to give them a better chance to survive and get out first. When his parachute opened too early,
George Bush’s head rammed into the bomber’s tail. When he landed, he was bleeding, vomiting, crying. He’d just survived a burning plane crash. His crewmates, despite all his actions, didn’t. Those crewmates didn’t just give their lives.
They gave him a reason to appreciate living. It was a gift George Bush never forgot. The last time I saw him was a few weeks back as we honored Mrs. Bush. I’ll save that story for another day.
But of all the photos I have with him, this is the one I love most, him grabbing my hand with all that strength. Still gets me every time. Oh, and right now? You know what Mrs Bush just said to him? “What took you so long?” Sir, you really were the Man. #RIPGeorgeBush
The Sund&y Ampers&nd from Nick Aster
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.
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 Webmaster: Ana Srikanth Campus Editor: Peter Warren
Contributing Editors: Bruce Arthur, Shaun Assael, Nick Aster, Alex Belth, Sara J. Benincasa, Jonathan Bernstein, Sara Blask, Greg Bishop, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Maria Bustillos, Chris Cillizza, Anna Katherine Clemmons, Rich Cohen, Jonathan Coleman, Pam Colloff, Maureen Dowd, Charles Duhigg, Brett Michael Dykes, Geoff Edgers, Hadley Freeman, 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, Edmund Lee, Chris Lehmann, Will Leitch, Glynnis MacNicol, Drew Magary, Erik Malinowski, Jonathan Martin, Betsy Fischer Martin, Susan McPherson, 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, Bob Sassone, Bruce Schoenfeld, Michael Schur, Joe Sexton, Jacqui Shine, Rachel Sklar, Dan Shanoff, Ben Smith, Adam Sternbergh,Matt Sullivan, Wright Thompson, Pablo Torre, Kevin Van Valkenburg, John A. Walsh, Seth Wickersham and Karen Wickre.
Header Image: Chris Buck
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.
Enjoy the best longform journalism. Every Sunday.
This week, we've got a special duo of guest editors to introduce. Betsy Fischer Martin is an Emmy-winning journalist and former TV news executive, spending 23 years at NBC News and co-hosting the "Masters in Politics" podcast during the 2016 presidential election. She is currently the Executive Director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University—
Jonathan Martin is a national political correspondent for The New York Times. Before joining The Times, he had served as senior political writer for Politico since its inception in 2007. This year, he's written great stuff on 
This is how I met President George H.W. Bush. He wrote me a fan later saying he loved one of my thrillers, and could I sign a copy? Of course, I sent him a book. When we finally met, he spent the first ten minutes trying to convince my wife that he invented the phrase “You da Man.”
George Bush’s head rammed into the bomber’s tail. When he landed, he was bleeding, vomiting, crying. He’d just survived a burning plane crash. His crewmates, despite all his actions, didn’t. Those crewmates didn’t just give their lives.
