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Longreads

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
May 4, 2012

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1. Uncatchable
Michael Finkel | GQ | May 1, 2012 | 34 Minutes (8,507 words)

Forty years after hijacking a plane and then disappearing, George Wright is found in Portugal, with a new family and a new life:

"He sat in the backseat of an unmarked patrol car with an officer on either side and two in front. He was not handcuffed. A second vehicle followed them. In the car, the officers asked him innocuous questions. 'How was I feeling, my health, stuff like that,' says Wright. He became more suspicious.

"They arrived at a Lisbon police station and went into the captain's office. They sat around a table, and the officers began with more pointed questions.

"'Where were you before you came to Portugal?'

"'Guinea-Bissau,' Wright told them.

"'Where were you before that?'

"'France.'

"'And before that?'

"'Nowhere,' said Wright.

"'What about Algiers?'"


See also: "The Whole True Story of the Dougherty Gang" (Kathy Dobie, Jan. 2012)

Books by Michael Finkel on Amazon

2. Machine Politics
David Kushner | The New Yorker | April 30, 2012 | 23 Minutes (5,890 words)

How George Hotz, a teenager from New Jersey, inadvertantly kicked off a hacker war that pitted Sony against Anonymous and the group LulzSec:

"That year, someone mailed Hotz a PlayStation 3 video-game system, challenging him to be the first in the world to crack it. Hotz posted his announcement online and once again set about finding the part of the system that he could manipulate into doing what he wanted. Hotz focussed on the 'hypervisor,' powerful software that controls what programs run on the machine.

"To reach the hypervisor, he had to get past two chips called the Cell and the Cell Memory. He knew how he was going to scramble them: by connecting a wire to the memory and shooting it with pulses of voltage, just as he had when he hacked his iPhone."


See also: "Where's _why?" (Annie Lowrey, Slate, March 2012)


Books by David Kushner on Amazon

3. Turntable.fm: Where Did Our Love Go?
Burt Helm | Inc. | April 30, 2012 | 17 Minutes (4,264 words)

The complicated relationship between founders of a startup. Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein lead Turntable.fm, but with very different viewpoints on how to succeed:

"Then traffic started falling. By autumn, it dwindled to less than half its peak, and the very same tech watchers started wondering whether it was all over. Goldstein says he can hear the doubt in the voices of his Silicon Valley friends. 'I can tell now when people say, "How's it going?" they mean, "You're flattening, aren't you?" '

"Chasen and Goldstein agree the music fans are still out there (music site Pandora has 49 million active users, Spotify 17 million). Their disagreement over the answer to the obvious question—how to get them back—has created a rift between them that has influenced both their partnership and the direction of the company. In some ways, it's a classic split between product and marketing. But their predicament highlights what's so weird about the social-media business: Nobody understands why certain sites grow, exactly. Yet whether or not Turntable takes off again will determine whether it is worth billions or practically nothing. And with no causal data, all that remains is buzz, conjecture, and gossip—the
How's it going?"

See also: "A History of Chicago House Music" (Michaelangelo Matos, Chicago Reader)

4. Grandpa Was a Baller
Matt Kallman | The Classical | May 3, 2012 | 13 Minutes (3,358 words)

A writer digs into his grandfather's past and discovers stories about life as a professional basketball player in the 1940s for the Chicago Stags, part of the BAA (Basketball Association of America), which later merged with another league to become the NBA:

"Detroit’s coach gave Schadler the score: 'I have a wife and kids, and I’m keeping this money. I’ll see to it that you get yours at the end of the season.' Payment never came. It wasn’t just this game—two weeks had passed without Schadler, let alone any of the Vagabond Kings’ eight players, being paid a dime. The team was co-owned by two men, one of whom also owned a car dealership. The car salesman wanted out, and as a parting gift to the remaining owner (given out of guilt, and accepted out of an essential need) the Kings received two limousines. Since they couldn’t afford a bus, this became how they travelled around the country; hundreds of miles at a time, from game to game, in two limos—a confusing symbol for a failing league. Their lodging situation, though, screamed that the end was near. If a game was held in the vicinity of Detroit, team owner King Boring (yes, King Boring) began to shuttle the players to his home to sleep in his game room on air mattresses."

See also: "Welcome to the Far Eastern Conference" (Wells Tower, GQ, May 2011)

5. The Red Flag in the Flowerpot
Jeff Himmelman | New York magazine | April 29, 2012 | 19 Minutes (4,907 words)

A former research assistant for Bob Woodward is hired to help Ben Bradlee work on a book, and discovers that the former Washington Post managing editor still has unresolved questions from the Watergate era:

"Later in the interview, Ben talked about Bob’s famous secret source, whom he claimed to have met in an underground garage in rendezvous arranged via signals involving flowerpots and newspapers. “You know I have a little problem with Deep Throat,” Ben told Barbara.

"Did that potted [plant] incident ever happen? … and meeting in some garage. One meeting in the garage? Fifty meetings in the garage? I don’t know how many meetings in the garage … There’s a residual fear in my soul that that isn’t quite straight.

"I read it over a few times to make sure. Did Ben really have doubts about the Deep Throat story, as it had been passed down from newsroom to book to film to history?"

See also: "'I'm the Guy They Called Deep Throat'" (John D. O'Connor, Vanity Fair, 2005)

On Amazon: Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee

Fiction Pick: Casino
Alix Ohlin | Guernica | May 1, 2012 | 17 minutes (4,225 words)

A sisters' weekend and an unexpected encounter bring back memories:

"When Trisha comes to town we have to go out. She’s the bitterest soccer mom of all time and as part of her escape from home she wants to get drunk and complain about her workaholic husband and over-scheduled, ungrateful children. No one appreciates how much she does for them. All she does is give, give, give, without getting anything back, et cetera. I don’t really mind—I enjoy a good martini, and while Trisha rants I don’t have to worry about getting sloppy, given that she’s always sloppier—except that even her complaints are part boast. She has to mention her busy husband and the two hundred thousand he rakes in a year. Her children’s after-school activities for the gifted are just so freaking expensive and time-consuming. There’s a needle in every one of these remarks, pricking at my skin, saying See, Sherri? See?"

See also: "Homecoming" (Belle Boggs, At Length, Nov. 2009)

Books by Alix Ohlin on Amazon: Inside

More Longreads fiction picks


Featured Longreader 
David
David Gutowski
@largeheartedboy

David is a writer and editor of the music and literature website Largehearted Boy.


"My favorite Longread of the week is Bill Clinton's New York Times review of The Passage of Power, the new edition in Robert Caro's biography series of Lyndon B. Johnson. For me, this article formed the perfect storm: Bill Clinton is my favorite U.S. president, I find Lyndon Baines Johnson fascinating and read everything I can find on his life, and find Robert Caro's biographies to be as thorough and evenhanded as anyone writing today. Clinton's praise for both LBJ and Caro's book inspired me to drop everything and immediately read it for myself."
 

Seat of Power
Bill Clinton | The New York Times | May 2, 2012 | 7 minutes (1,595 words)


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