The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week.

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1. How U.S. Torture Left a Legacy of Damaged Minds

James Risen, Sheri Fink, Matt Apuzzo | New York Times | Oct. 9, 2016 | 24 minutes (6,085 words)

So much for assurances that harsh interrogation techniques used by the United States at Guantanamo Bay and in secret CIA prisons around the world wouldn’t cause lasting harm. New York Times reporters interviewed over 100 former detainees for this article on the never-ending psychological torment many of them live with years later.

2. My Friend Sam

Curtis Sittenfeld | The New Yorker | Oct. 12, 2016 | 9 minutes (2,274 words)

A beautiful story about a friendship.

3. I Was Pregnant, Then I Wasn’t

Laura Turner | BuzzFeed | Oct. 12, 2016 | 15 minutes (3,930 words)

The aftermath of a miscarriage, immediate and raw: “It was an animal sadness born of the worst kind of disappointed expectation. The future stretched out before us, one torturous minute at a time. The sadness lived in me as an ache in my stomach, and it’s with me still.”

4. Spoiler Alert

Kathryn Miles | Pacific Standard | Sept. 21, 2016 | 20 minutes (5,140 words)

Inside the byzantine, secretive, Rube Goldbergian world of food inspection and safety (or, why we still can’t stop bags of baby spinach from making us sick).

5. Dangerous Idiots: How the Liberal Media Elite Failed Working-Class Americans

Sarah Smarsh | The Guardian | Oct. 13, 2016 | 15 minutes (3,899 words)

Trump supporters are not the caricatures journalists depict — and native Kansan Sarah Smarsh sets out to correct what newsrooms get wrong.

from Longreads Blog https://blog.longreads.com/2016/10/14/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-140/