Everything in This City Must
After six months in Leipzig, a German reporter asks the novelist what he’ll miss. But it’s back here in the United States where more dangerous questions take shape, none easily answered with good beer.
longreads
A collection of 187 issues
The Case of the Hungry Stranger
A man is always more complicated than his paper trail—especially when he’s your father, who walked out one day.
Six Strings
Growing up in Ohio, far from the homeland of her parents, a girl puzzles over her identity, until the strings of a sitar create a connection.
Bad Land
America is full of guns—one gun for every citizen—and Americans often use them to shoot one another. It’s not enough anymore to say we love our guns. The question is: Why do we kill?
Start of Darkness
The world of the myope is often a nicer place—faces lack wrinkles, and trees seem to be painted by Monet. Then, during a visit to Moscow, a black spot appears.
I Wish That We Could Both Be There
In 1974, a car hits a seven-year-old boy in central New Jersey. The boy dies. From 2013, a former friend starts to probe the causes, effects, statistics, and consequences.
Home on the Thames
London's evolution is measured in centuries, not years. But when half of the city's new abodes go to foreign buyers—frequently as third or fourth homes—who's steering the design? Assessing Battersea's return from 30 years in the desert, just in time for a brand new American embassy.
Rainy Night in Georgia
Even in the most forsaken corners of the Caucasus, daily life can boil down to domestic turmoil, hip-hop videos, and arguing over Bryan Adams’s nationality.
Smog of War
More than a decade after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan—now our longest war—most Americans still know next to nothing about the people who live there, and the liberties denied them. Lessons from a rapid education.
Right Here Waiting
After frequenting a local haunt where nobody knows his name, a Chicago writer makes new friends, rips on Richard Marx online, and then suddenly lands a real live celebrity musician at their door.