Copy
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week September 21, 2012 Longreads Member Exclusive: 'When Your Therapist Drives You Crazy' Sign up for a Longreads Membership and you'll get our latest exclusive, "When Your Therapist Drives You Crazy," from Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely. A Longreads Membership is also a great way to support our service. Sign up for $3 per month or $30 per year.

1. The Boy They Couldn't Kill Thomas Lake | Sports Illustrated | September 17, 2012 | 26 minutes (6,642 words) Thirteen years after NFL player Rae Carruth conspired to kill his pregnant girlfriend, the child that survived is thriving with support from his grandmother:

"To Chancellor, Saundra is G-Mom. Cherica is Mommy Angel. G-Mom talks all the time about Mommy Angel. She keeps pictures of Mommy Angel everywhere. She has even told Chancellor—or Lee, as she now calls him, so he can say and spell his name—a streamlined version of Mommy Angel's story, which is, of course, his own story.

"'Well,' G-Mom says at the table, 'he knows that Mommy was killed, and that Daddy did, you know, Daddy did a baaad thing. And he's in jail right now paying for the bad thing that he did. And we just say that he, you know, he made a mistake. Right?'"


More Lake: "The Legacy of Wes Leonard" (Feb. 2012)
2. The Honor System Chris Jones | Esquire | September 17, 2012 | 24 minutes (6243 words) [Not single-page] The magician Teller (of Penn & Teller) discovers a copycat has taken a trick that he's been performing since 1975:

"When Teller filed his lawsuit, it made news: ROGUE MAGICIAN IS EXPOSING OUR SECRETS!!! read the TMZ headline. Teller did not like the coverage. The publicity might have sold more tickets to the show, but it misunderstood his purpose. Most of the stories suggested that he was suing Bakardy to protect the secret of his trick, the method. 'The method doesn't matter,' Teller says. He has performed Shadows over the years with three different methods, seeking perfection. The first involved a web of fishing line that took a painfully long time to set up; the second version required rigid, uncomfortable choreography; the third, today's version, he has never revealed. Bakardy, who said that he had seen Penn & Teller's show, almost certainly didn't use Teller's present method. He knew only the idea and the effect it had on the audience. He felt the crackle that runs through the otherwise silent theater when Teller wields his knife; he saw that some people start to cry, little soft sobs in the dark; he heard that some people make strange noises and other people try to make noises and fail. What Bakardy stole from Teller wasn't a secret. Bakardy stole something that everybody who has ever seen Shadows already knows."

More Jones: "The Strange Thing About Bruce Jenner" (May 2012)
3. Going Gently Into That Good Night Daniel Krieger | Narratively | September 17, 2012 | 17 minutes (4,472 words) What end-of-life options do the terminally ill have, and should they be offered "aid in dying"?

"When a patient in the Northeast contacts Compassion & Choices, he is referred to Schwarz, whose first order of business is to find out who the patient is and what his current medical situation entails. Then, Schwarz attempts to get a sense of what the patient is looking for. She tries to provide information to all callers, but to qualify for help, patients should be able to make their own decisions and be suffering, whether in a terminal stage of illness or not.

"'There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what we do,' Schwarz said. 'What we do is provide information about end-of-life choices to help patients make informed decisions that reflect their values and wishes. We don’t provide the means. We don’t administer. We don’t encourage or coerce. We have no agenda other than to provide complete and accurate information about end-of-life options.'

"And in doing this, Schwarz's role is to help a patient navigate the end of his life so he can maintain some control over it, instead of leaving it to doctors who are trained not only to lessen suffering but also to keep him alive and death at bay."


See also: "A Life Worth Ending" (Michael Wolff, New York magazine, May 2012)
4. The Lie Factory Jill Lepore | The New Yorker | September 17, 2012 | 27 minutes (6,785 words) The early days of the political consulting business—starting with Upton Sinclair's failed run for California governor in the 1930s and the opposition work of Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter:

"Whitaker and Baxter weren’t just inventing new techniques; they were writing a rule book. Never lobby; woo voters instead. 'Our conception of practical politics is that if you have a sound enough case to convince the folks back home, you don’t have to buttonhole the Senator,' Baxter explained. Make it personal: candidates are easier to sell than issues. If your position doesn’t have an opposition, or if your candidate doesn’t have an opponent, invent one. Once, when fighting an attempt to recall the mayor of San Francisco, Whitaker and Baxter waged a campaign against the Faceless Man—the idea was Baxter’s—who might end up replacing him. Baxter drew a picture, on a tablecloth, of a fat man with a cigar poking out from beneath a face hidden by a hat, and then had him plastered on billboards all over the city, with the question 'Who’s Behind the Recall?' Pretend that you are the Voice of the People. Whitaker and Baxter bought radio ads, sponsored by 'the Citizens Committee Against the Recall,' in which an ominous voice said, 'The real issue is whether the City Hall is to be turned over, lock, stock, and barrel, to an unholy alliance fronting for a faceless man.' (The recall was defeated.) Attack, attack, attack. Whitaker said, 'You can’t wage a defensive campaign and win!'"

More Lepore: "The Commandments: The Constitution and Its Worshippers" (January 2011)

Books by Lepore on Amazon
5. The Birth of Bond David Kamp | Vanity Fair | September 19, 2012 | 27 minutes (6,863 words) The complicated beginnings of the big-screen 007. After several false starts, author Ian Fleming handed his character to two relatively small-time film producers:

"It is 1959, and Sean Connery is putting in time in a cornball live-action Disney feature called Darby O’Gill and the Little People. He’s the second male lead, billed beneath not only Albert Sharpe, the elderly Irish character actor in the title role—a kindly farmhand who sees leprechauns—but also the green-eyed girl, the ingénue Janet Munro. Though verily pump-misting pheromonal musk into the air, to a degree unmatched before or since by any actor in a Disney family movie, Connery is still a jobbing scuffler, not a star. He has no idea of what lies in store for him.

"The seventh of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, Goldfinger, has recently reached the shops. But there are no Bond pictures yet. In London, a Long Island–born film producer named Albert R. Broccoli, known as Cubby, is still lamenting that he blew his chance with Fleming. The previous year, Broccoli had set up a meeting with the En­glish author and his representatives to talk about securing movie rights to the Bond series, only to miss the meeting to tend to his wife, who had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. In Broccoli’s absence, his business partner, Irving Allen, let Fleming know that he didn’t share his colleague’s ardor. 'In my opinion,' Allen told Bond’s creator, 'these books are not even good enough for television.'"


More Vanity Fair: "Who Wants to Be a Billionaire?" (Randall Stross, Sept. 2012)

Books by Kamp on Amazon
Fiction Pick: Vicissitudes, CA Bryan Hurt | New England Review | September 12, 2012 | 29 minutes (7,431 words) A story about an unemployed ethnomusicologist, gray whales, and Miranda July:

"'Garfield was my favorite president,' said Brandon.

"'James A. Garfield?' said Kara. 'President from March to July of 1881?'

"'From Ohio?' she said.

"'That’s the one,' said Brandon.

"He said: 'I think he would have proven to be an effective leader if he’d been given the chance.'

"Charles put his hand on Kara’s knee.

"'That’s funny,' said Charles. 'Garfield’s killer, Charles Guiteau, is my favorite presidential assassin, and it’s not just because we share a name.'"


See also: "The Third-Born" (Mohsin Hamid, The New Yorker, Sept. 2012)

More Longreads fiction picks
Featured Longreader
Matthew
Matthew Herper @matthewherper Matthew has covered science and medicine for Forbes for 12 years, from the Human Genome Project through Vioxx to the blossoming DNA technology changing the world today. 
"My favorite longread this week was this stunning piece by Mina Kimes at Fortune, who documents how the device giant Synthes sold a bone cement for vertebroplasty, a spine-gluing procedure done to combat pain from vertebral fractures, despite a lack of evidence whether this particular glue was safe. In this case, the glue apparently wasn’t safe. The story has everything: corporate malfeasance, a household name (Synthes is now part of Johnson & Johnson) and a billionaire (Synthes founder Hansjorg Wyss, one of medicine’s richest men). It is a fantastic and chilling read." Bad to the Bone: A Medical Horror Story Mina Kimes | Fortune | September 18, 2012 | 30 minutes (7,557 words)
Like Top 5 Longreads of the Week on Facebook
Thanks for subscribing to Longreads! We'll send you the best storytelling from across the web, as well as Longreads Exclusives and Originals.

Manage your profile | Unsubscribe <<Email Address>> from this list.

Copyright (C) 2012 Longreads / Automattic Inc. All rights reserved.

Forward this email to a friend