This week, we’re sharing stories from Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig, and David Barstow, Nicole R. Fleetwood, Jaeah J. Lee, Shelley Puhak, and Sarah Miller.
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1. Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father
Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig, and David Barstow | The New York Times | October 2, 2018 | 56 minutes (14,246 words)
A ground-breaking investigation into the potentially illegal financial schemes, tax evasions, and grandiose lies employed by Fred Trump and his son, Donald J. Trump, designed to create the illusion of the president as a self-made billionaire, and to falsely raise and lower the values of their holdings as needed to make money, and hide it.
2. Raising a Black Boy Not to Be Afraid
Nicole R. Fleetwood | LitHub | October 3, 2018 | 15 minutes (3,836 words)
“No matter how hard he worked in school, how many A’s he earned, or how kind he was, he had little influence over how strangers on the subway and on the streets thought of him.”
3. The Real Cost of Working in the House of Mouse
Jaeah J. Lee | Topic | September 28, 2018 | 25 minutes (6,409 words)
The employees spreading joy and maintaining animatronics at Disneyland can’t pay their basic bills.
4. The Body and the Library
Shelley Puhak | CrimeReads | April 13, 2018 | 15 minutes (3,955 words)
The body of a murdered woman was found outside the library where the author used to read as a young girl. The library, once a safe space to learn, dream, and indulge her imagination, became ominous and dangerous, a place where readers could get choked with the bag that held their books, a place for the brain and body.
5. The Movie Assassin
Sarah Miller | Popula | September 30, 2018 | 22 minutes (5,578 words)
This personal essay by Sarah Miller has gone viral and divided Twitter. Those who love the piece — about Miller’s struggle in 1996 to get away with panning “The English Patient” for an alt weekly paper — appreciate her brutal honesty and her irreverence toward the Serious Film establishment.