The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
July 6, 2012

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1. A Snitch's Dilemma
Ted Conover | New York Times Magazine | June 30, 2012 | 30 Minutes (7,688 words)

In Atlanta, a drug dealer is asked to become a confidential informant for cops in a narcotics unit. He turns them in after the officers try to cover up a botched drug bust that kills an innocent woman:

"'You made a buy today for us,' Smith explained. 'Two $25 baggies of crack.'

"'I did?' White asked. It took him a moment to register. 'O.K. Who did I buy it from?'

"'Dude named Sam.' Smith described the imaginary seller, told how Sam had taken his money then walked White to the back of the house and handed him the drugs as Smith and a fellow officer, Arthur Tesler, watched from a car across the street.

"'O.K.,' White said. 'Where?'

"Smith said: '933 Neal Street. I’ll call you later.'

"Now in the living room, the TV reporter was saying how a 92-year-old woman had died in the incident, and people were suggesting that the police had shot her. Two and two came together in White’s mind. They did it, he suddenly knew. They messed up. They killed that old lady. Now his heart pounded as the implications became clear. And they want me to cover for them."

See also: "Counter-Terrorism Is Getting Complicated" (Tom Junod, Esquire, Jan. 2012)

Books by Conover on Amazon

2. The Well-Hung Boy Next Door
Wells Tower | GQ | July 3, 2012 | 30 Minutes (7,570 words)

Men rarely become porn stars, but James Deen has found a large following simply by being "average":

"James Deen, whose real name is Bryan Sevilla, grew up in Pasadena, California. His parents are both, after a fashion, rocket scientists. His father is a mechanical engineer for NASA. His mother does data analysis for the space agency. Deen, contrary to our notion of porn stars as survivors of sexual trauma, does not recall any sexual abuse or destructive misadventures, other than a teacher who Deen says tried to molest him when he was 8 or 9, but Deen "punched his testicles a lot" and made good his escape.

"Deen lost his virginity at age 12 during a sleepover at a Jewish camp. Not long after, in junior high school, he made enemies of the football team by having sex with a player's sister in the school pool during gym. He had some drug escapades in junior high. He spent a couple of years in outpatient rehab. Around age 15, he left high school and moved out and spent two years more or less homeless, hanging around with a crew of gutter punks. Relations with his parents remained reasonably cordial. They furnished him with a cell phone, and he periodically snuck into his mom's house to do laundry. (Deen's parents are divorced.)"

More from Tower: "Leopard" (Fiction, The New Yorker, 2008)

Books by Tower on Amazon

3. Hearing the Voice of God
Jill Wolfson | Stanford Magazine | July 5, 2012 | 12 Minutes (3,035 words)

A look at anthropologist Tanya Lurhmann, and how it is possible for people to experience the voice of a higher being:

"In the name of research, Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews and "tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate." So real, in fact, that members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings and getting God's advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy.

"After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her research focuses on 'theory of mind,' how we conceptualize our minds and those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer can train a person to hear what they determine to be God's voice."

More from Stanford Magazine: "The Menace Within: The Stanford Prison Experiment 40 Years Later" (Romesh Ratnesar, July 2011)

Books by Wolfson on Amazon

4. After America
Dexter Filkins | The New Yorker | July 2, 2012 | 39 Minutes (9,939 words)

What does the future hold for Afghanistan after the Americans leave? Some fear that the country's army won't be able to stop another civil war from erupting:

"Many Afghans fear that NATO has lost the will to control the militias, and that the warlords are reëmerging as formidable local forces. Nashir, the Khanabad governor, who is the scion of a prominent family, said that the rise of the warlords was just the latest in a series of ominous developments in a country where government officials exercise virtually no independent authority. 'These people do not change, they are the same bandits,' he said. 'Everything here, when the Americans leave, will be looted.'

"Nashir grew increasingly vehement. 'Mark my words, the moment the Americans leave, the civil war will begin,' he said. 'This country will be divided into twenty-five or thirty fiefdoms, each with its own government.' Nashir rattled off the names of some of the country’s best-known leaders—some of them warlords—and the areas they come from: 'Mir Alam will take Kunduz. Atta will take Mazar-e-Sharif. Dostum will take Sheberghan. The Karzais will take Kandahar. The Haqqanis will take Paktika. If these things don’t happen, you can burn my bones when I die.'"

More Filkins: "The Journalist and the Spies" (Sept. 2011)

Books by Filkins on Amazon

5. The Little-Known History of How the Modern Olympics Got Their Start
Frank Deford | Smithsonian | June 30, 2012 | 25 Minutes (6,278 words)

Tracing the modern Olympics back to their origin in rural England, where there was a very different set of competitive events:

"Ah, but in Much Wenlock, the Olympic spirit thrived, year after year—as it does to this day. Penny Brookes had first scheduled the games on October 22, 1850, in an effort 'to promote the moral, physical and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants' of Wenlock. However, notwithstanding this high-minded purpose, and unlike the sanctimonious claptrap that suffocates the Games today, Penny Brookes also knew how to put a smile on the Olympic face. His annual Much Wenlock games had the breezy ambience of a medieval county fair. The parade to the 'Olympian Fields' began, appropriately, at the two taverns in town, accompanied by heralds and bands, with children singing, gaily tossing flower petals. The winners were crowned with laurel wreaths, laid on by the begowned fairest of Much Wenlock’s fair maids. Besides the classic Greek fare, the competitions themselves tended to the eclectic. One year there was a blindfolded wheelbarrow race, another offered 'an old woman’s race for a pound of tea' and on yet another occasion there was a pig chase, with the intrepid swine squealing past the town’s limestone cottages until cornered 'in the cellar of Mr. Blakeway’s house.'"

More Deford: "Sometimes The Bear Eats You: Confessions of a Sportswriter" (March 2010)

Deford books on Amazon

Fiction Pick: Ice Man
Elmore Leonard | The Atlantic | June 22, 2012 | 10 minutes (2,351 words)

A run-in with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer after a rodeo:

"Victor saw Nachee and Billy Cosa looking toward the entrance and turned his head to see a Riverside County deputy talking to the manager. Some more law was outside. They’d go around to the kitchen and check on Mexicans without any papers. Victor saw the Riverside deputy look his way. No, he was looking at the white guy at the next table, the guy wearing a straw Stetson he’d fool with, raising the curled brim and setting it close on his eyes again. Never changed his expression. He had size, but looked ten years past herding cows. It was the man's U.S. Government jacket told Victor he was none of their business."

Books by Leonard on Amazon

More Longreads fiction picks

Damien Joyce @DamienJoyce Damien is a business technologist interested in tech, social media and all things Liverpool Football Club-related. He's also an occasional music blogger with a passion for good music.

"My favorite longread of the week is 'Julian Barnes: My Life as a Bibliophile,' in the Guardian. The author reflects on why he believes the physical book will survive. It's beautifully articulated, and is a great example of why #longreads has become my favorite Twitter hashtag: 'Books will have to earn their keep—and so will bookshops. Books will have to become more desirable: not luxury goods, but well-designed, attractive, making us want to pick them up, buy them, give them as presents, keep them, think about rereading them, and remember in later years that this was the edition in which we first encountered what lay inside.'"
 

Julian Barnes: My Life as a Bibliophile
Julian Barnes | The Guardian | June 29, 2012 | 14 minutes (3,521 words)

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