The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
May 11, 2012

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1. In Libya, the Captors Have Become the Captive
Robert F. Worth | New York Times Magazine | May 9, 2012 | 32 Minutes (8,006 words)

With Qaddafi's former guards now in prison, one man leads the interrogation of his brother's killer:

"Nasser called Marwan’s father and invited him to come see his son. For the last six months, the family stayed away out of fear that the thuwar would take revenge on them all. On the following Friday, eight of them showed up at the base in Tajoura. Nasser greeted them at the door and led them downstairs. 'It was a very emotional moment,' Nasser said. 'You can imagine how I felt when I saw my brother’s killer embracing his brother.' The two brothers hugged each other for a long time, sobbing, until finally Nasser pushed them apart, because he could not bear it anymore. Later, he took one of the cousins aside and asked him if he knew why Marwan was being held. The man said no. 'I told him: "Your cousin killed six very qualified people whom Libya will need, two doctors and four officers. One of them was my brother." ' The cousin listened, and then he hugged Nasser before the family left."

See also: "What I Lost in Libya" (Clare Morgana Gillis, The Atlantic)

2. The Maturation of the Billionaire Boy-Man
Henry Blodget | New York magazine | May 7, 2012 | 19 Minutes (4,799 words)

[Not single-page] Facebook staffers once told Mark Zuckerberg he needed to take "CEO lessons." How Zuckerberg responded, and what it means for Facebook leading up to its IPO:

"'Basically, there are two ways to build an organization,' a former Facebook employee explains. 'You can be really, really good at hiring, or you can be really, really good at firing.' Zuckerberg has been really good at firing. 'We made some hires that weren’t the right ones. And we were pretty good at correcting that quickly. Mark deserves the credit for identifying and following through with that.' In other cases, key personnel who were good fits simply got outgrown by the company. It can be even harder to jettison those kinds of employees, whose contributions have earned them the loyalty of business partners and colleagues. But here too Zuckerberg did not flinch."

More Blodget: "How Goldman Sachs Blew the Facebook IPO" (Business Insider, May 2012)

Henry Blodget books on Amazon

3. When Illness Makes a Spouse a Stranger
Denise Grady | New York Times | May 8, 2012 | 13 Minutes (3,358 words)

A woman watched her husband's behavior change dramatically—so much so she even considered divorce. He was eventually diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a rare and frequently misdiagnosed brain disease that affects personality and language skills:

"Looking back, Mrs. French, who is 66 and lives in Manhattan, recalled episodes of odd behavior over the years and realized that her husband’s mind had probably begun to slip while he was in his 50s, at least a decade before the disease was diagnosed. He had always changed jobs a lot. At the time she took it as a sign of a stubborn personality, not of illness — and it is still not clear which it was. He always wanted to do things his own way, and that did not sit well with some bosses.

"'I thought it was just Michael being Michael,' she said.

"A friend described Mr. French as being unable to read the tea leaves, oblivious of corporate politics. At one point Mrs. French even bought him a self-help book. But he never changed."

See also: "A Family Learns the True Meaning of 'in Sickness and in Health'" (Susan Baer, Washington Post, Jan. 2012)

Denise Grady books on Amazon

4. The Frequent Fliers Who Flew Too Much
Ken Bensinger | Los Angeles Times | May 6, 2012 | 9 Minutes (2,379 words)

American Airlines once sold a lifetime pass for unlimited first-class travel. They soon regretted it:

"In September 2007, a pricing analyst reviewing international routes focused the airline's attention on how much the AAirpass program was costing, company emails show.

"'We pay the taxes,' a revenue management executive wrote in a subsequent email. 'We award AAdvantage miles, and we lose the seat every time they fly.'

"Cade was assigned to find out whether any AAirpass holders were violating the rules, starting with those who flew the most.

"She pulled years of flight records for Rothstein and Vroom and calculated that each was costing American more than $1 million a year."

More Los Angeles Times: "Emilio Franco's Tragedia in the Southland: The Killing of a Cultural Icon" (July 2011)

5. A Fish Story
Alison Fairbrother | Washington Monthly | May 10, 2012 | 28 Minutes (7,051 words)

The political battle over the disappearance of the menhaden, a silvery, six-inch fish that's food for larger fish and farmed for omega-3 oils and fertilizer:

"Harvested by the billions and then processed into various industrial products, menhaden are extruded into feed pellets that make up the staple food product for a booming global aquaculture market, diluted into oil for omega-3 health supplements, and sold in various meals and liquids to companies that make pet food, livestock feed, fertilizer, and cosmetics. We have all consumed menhaden one way or another. Pound for pound, more menhaden are pulled from the sea than any other fish species in the continental United States, and 80 percent of the menhaden netted from the Atlantic are the property of a single company."

More Washington Monthly: "We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran" (Paul Pillar, March 2012)

Fiction Pick: The Dinner Party
Joshua Ferris | The New Yorker | August 11, 2008 | 21 minutes (5,210 words)

A couple prepares for another predictable evening with old friends:

"Later, he came out of the bathroom just as the toilet was completing its roar. She was no longer in the kitchen. He took another cheese and cracker. He walked past the dressed table to the living room. She sat on the sofa reading the same magazine he had been reading. He stood in the middle of the room and raised his hands. 'Where are they?'

"'If there’s one thing that’s predictable,' she said.

"'But it’s almost forty-five minutes.'

"'They’ll be eating some very cold appetizers.'"

(Story selected by Alexander Chee, writer and literary adviser for Storyville)

Books by Joshua Ferris on Amazon

More Longreads fiction picks

Amy Whipple @itsamywhipple Amy is a freelance writer/editor and child-caregiver extraordinaire in Pittsburgh, Pa.

"This week, I'm choosing 'On the Universality of Creativity in the Liberal Arts and in the Sciences,' by S. James Gates in the On Being blog. On Being is consistently one of the most nuanced and insightful shows in public radio/podcast-land in part because of host Krista Tippett, and in part because of the impassioned people with whom she converses. Recent guest S. James Gates speaks/writes here about the interconnectivity of the liberal arts and the sciences (specifically, physics). As with any of the arts, physics is a matter of creativity, curiosity, risk and faith. Gates writes that the sciences ask, 'How does our house (the universe) operate when we are not there?' In turn, the liberal arts ask, 'How do we and the house operate when we are home?' A must-read for people who can’t imagine leaving the house (so to speak)."
 

On the Universality of Creativity in the Liberal Arts and in the Sciences
S. James Gates | On Being | May 7, 2012 | 23 minutes (5,799 words)

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