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Longreads
What Thomas Jefferson Taught Me About Charlottesville and America

University of Virginia grad Joshua Adams believes that if you want to understand the recent violence there, look back at history and the school’s complicated founder.

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to Fund More Stories
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These Are the Locals Who Get The Story of Charlottesville Right

The historians, activists, reporters, and columnists who tell the complicated and ever-changing story of their own community.

How a Journalist Uncovered the True Identity of Jihadi John

Souad Mekhennet’s thrilling tale of late-night rendezvous, burner phones, and secret codes — and her quest to reveal the man in black.

Exclusive
A Look Back at the 1939 Pro-Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden

The massive rally featured a clash between protestors and white supremacists.

Latest Picks

The White Lies of Craft Culture
Lauren Michele Jackson  / Eater
What Thomas Jefferson Taught Me About Charlottesville, and America
Joshua Adams  / Longreads
An Alternate Future for the Mall
Madeleine Wattenbarger  / n+1
“We Just Feel Like We Don’t Belong Here Anymore”
Becca Andrews  / Mother Jones
Down the Breitbart Hole
Wil S. Hylton  / New York Times Magazine
The Fight of His Life
Brian Castner  / Esquire
Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones. Tristan Harris Wants to Rescue Them.
Tristan Harris , Nicholas Thompson  / Wired
Annie Dillard’s Classic Essay: ‘Total Eclipse’
Annie Dillard  / The Atlantic
Nobody Knows What Lies Beneath New York City
Greg Milner  / Bloomberg Businessweek
How a Journalist Uncovered the True Identity of Jihadi John
Souad Mekhennet  / Longreads
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Latest Posts

If Clean Food Is for Everyone, Why Are Its Gurus All Young, Pretty Women?

How gendered marketing tropes continue to fuel the latest lifestyle fads.

New York City’s Final Frontier: Underground

What lays beneath New York City affects life above ground. One team is mapping the city’s below-ground infrastructure.

The Sun Was Going and the World Was Wrong

Annie Dillard describes her experience of the 1979 solar eclipse, the last one visible in the United States until this year.

What the Future of Death Looks Like

A look at the process of alkaline hydrosis, a more eco-friendly type of cremation, and the growing movement behind it.

Can Apple End Smartphone Addiction?

Technology platforms rely on hijacking our attention. Can Apple help us win it back?

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Instagram Wants to Make the Internet a Nicer Place to Be

The photo sharing service has been creating tools and algorithms to let its users close comments and ban offensive words.

There’s No Overtime In This Game

Georgia Cloepfil is only in her mid-twenties, but she already contemplating the end of her soccer career.

Exclusive
You Are a Jigsaw Puzzle with Missing Food-Shaped Pieces

Fat, thin, over-eating, under-eating. Lindsay Hunter’s relationship with food, weight, and body image has been consistently complicated.

Why the Most Beautiful Poems Defy Understanding

“In a poem, we feel what is there, but also what is not.”

How We Got to Here: A Charlottesville Reading List

This weekend’s events will resonate long after the crowd was dispersed, long after the cable news trucks leave, long after the school year begins.

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Popular Posts

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Hard Lessons in Living Off the Grid

A family tried to build its own sustainable paradise in Hawaii. Then Tesla’s batteries came to town.

Failed Promises: A ‘Bachelorette’ Reading List

This was the year ‘The Bachelorette’ tried to take on race. Things did not go well.

Exclusive
Whose Fault Was Dunkirk?

For years, historians have blamed King Leopold of Belgium. But did they fall for Allied propaganda?

Exclusive
Mourning the Low-Rent, Weirdo-Filled East Village of Old

An excerpt of Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost its Soul, by Jeremiah Moss.

Exclusive
Percy Ross Wants to Give You Money!

He was was a self-made, blue-collar millionaire in Reagan’s America. But when Percy Ross decided to give away his fortune, he made things simple: all you had to do was ask for it.

A Look Back at the 1939 Pro-Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden and the Protesters Who Organized Against It

Seventy-something years ago, another massive rally took place in the United States that featured a clash between protesters and white supremacists.

Books

Exclusive
How a Journalist Uncovered the True Identity of Jihadi John

Souad Mekhennet’s thrilling tale of late-night rendezvous, burner phones, and secret codes — and her quest to reveal the man in black.

Dear Chief Justice John Roberts: Our Country Has Not Changed

The president’s failure to condemn Charlottesville is directly linked to voter suppression in the United States.

Exclusive
Whose Fault Was Dunkirk?

For years, historians have blamed King Leopold of Belgium. But did they fall for Allied propaganda?

Exclusive
The Brief Career and Self-Imposed Exile of Jutta Hipp, Jazz Pianist

Europe’s “First Lady of Jazz” moved to New York in 1955, played for five more years, then disappeared — while royalty checks piled up with her record label.

Billy Bragg: Skiffle Songs Are Railroad Songs

“The British kids were trying to escape the past as quickly as they could and the guitar offered them the best means to do that.”

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Current Events

New York City’s Final Frontier: Underground

What lays beneath New York City affects life above ground. One team is mapping the city’s below-ground infrastructure.

These Are the Locals Who Get The Story of Charlottesville Right

The historians, activists, reporters, and columnists who tell the complicated and ever-changing story of their own community.

How We Got to Here: A Charlottesville Reading List

This weekend’s events will resonate long after the crowd was dispersed, long after the cable news trucks leave, long after the school year begins.

Exclusive
Hard Lessons in Living Off the Grid

A family tried to build its own sustainable paradise in Hawaii. Then Tesla’s batteries came to town.

Scaramucci’s Removal Evokes White House Turmoil During the Reagan Years

Anthony Scaramucci resigned after just 10 days as White House communications director. Turns out, he also set a record previously held by a member of Ronald Reagan’s administration.

View all

Personal Essay

There’s No Overtime In This Game

Georgia Cloepfil is only in her mid-twenties, but she already contemplating the end of her soccer career.

Exclusive
You Are a Jigsaw Puzzle with Missing Food-Shaped Pieces

Fat, thin, over-eating, under-eating. Lindsay Hunter’s relationship with food, weight, and body image has been consistently complicated.

Why the Most Beautiful Poems Defy Understanding

“In a poem, we feel what is there, but also what is not.”

Innocence Abroad

“I’d had no idea that we had ever had to define our identities at all, because to me, white Americans were born fully formed, completely detached from any sort of complicated past.”

Exclusive
Forever Yesterday: Peering Inside My Mom’s Fading Mind

Kevin Sampsell bears witness to the ways in which Alzheimer’s has been pulling his mother back in time, and taking over her life.

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