This week’s top 5 long reads

Human ingenuity in the face of crumbling infrastructure. A man’s quest to save birds that may already be extinct. A cultural divide that divides major musical genres. A personal essay that interweaves space and family. And the jungle trek went horribly wrong. These are our editors’ favorite reads of the week.

Ilir Gashi | Guardian and Kosovo 2.0 | July 13, 2023 | 4,061 words

In 2012, I lived in Pristina, Kosovo for several months. Her mother was disappointed, but she couldn’t receive mail at my apartment. I didn’t have a postbox or a number. As far as I know, no one in Brutalist apartment complexes has done that. I told her mother that she would not accept “no address” as an answer, so she told her to send mail to a nearby NATO base. I went there and met someone who offered to act as a go-between. (Thanks again, Drew.) I have the privilege of being an American and having connections to powerful institutions. Still, I did what many people in the Balkans do when they need to transport something from point A to point B. I mean, I asked a friend. Ilir Gashi’s essay, runner-up for the European Press Award, details how informal networks transporting luggage, letters and passengers have developed in response to border conflicts and deep poverty in the Balkans. Says. Gashi worked as a temporary courier, delivering medicines, documents, homemade groceries, and even a doll that the girl had left behind when her family returned to Pristina during a trip to Belgrade. “Although Serbian radio-television weather maps show Pristina as part of Serbia, as far as Serbian postal services are concerned, this city does not exist. Like other parts of Kosovo where Serbs do not live. ,” Gashi wrote. Majority. Private delivery services are too expensive. The only way the doll could reach Pristina was if someone took it. ” This is a beautiful story of everyday resilience. —SD

Lindsay Lyles Garden & Gun | May 24, 2023 | 4,371 words

Do the long-billed woodpeckers still exist in Arkansas? If you ask Bobby Harrison, the answer is yes. If you ask most other people, the answer is no. But that didn’t stop Harrison from making 2,000 trips to Arkansas’ wetlands to find the bird, which hasn’t been officially seen since 1944. At any time, the U.S. federal government could declare this bird extinct and end all environmental protections for the species. Harrison is out to prove everyone wrong and the clock is ticking.Works by Lindsay Lyles garden & gun This book is much more than just a beautifully written profile of Harrison and his majestic quarry. It’s not just a story of one man’s quest. It is an ode to faith, perseverance, faith, and above all, hope. “In the end, searching for an ivory beak feels just like buying a lottery ticket,” Lyles wrote. “Rationally, I know that’s not going to happen, but if and did it In addition to all of that, the mystery of the deep forest, where you can lose or find something, will keep your heart racing and keep you looking at every corner of the landscape. ” Please take your time to enjoy this work. It doesn’t take long before you’re rooting for Harrison to hit the jackpot. —K.S.

Emily Nussbaum | new yorker | July 17, 2023 | 9,528 words

I’m not a fan of so-called country music. I’ve never been to Nashville.So in many ways, I’m exactly right do not have Audiences as Emily Nussbaum spectacularly unpacks the divisions currently plaguing the genre and the city. But I love a good culture change, and I love subverting my own expectations. And her work accomplishes both without breaking a sweat. It feels cheap to call what is happening an ideological divide, but nothing else comes close. Nussbaum proves that for years country music has been dominated by a variant of the so-called “bro” genre, a facile cosplay of working-class clichés performed by wealthy suburbanites. But as more queer, black, female, politically progressive artists find success by pushing back against prevailing conventions, they are inevitably relegated to the rural-adjacent genre “Americana.” Masu. In the long run, that means less radio play, less sales, and ultimately ghettoization. Nussbaum repeatedly finds people and places that highlight this struggle. Her scene work is effortless and plentiful, whether she hangs out with members of the Black Opry musical collective or soaks up the atmosphere of fellow country star Jason Aldean’s Nashville club. It’s tempting to dismiss this as parachute journalism, but Nussbaum has been a country fan for decades, and there’s little baggage to push past her keen eye that has made her a dynamite TV critic. new yorker. What emerges is a haunting, hopeful, and sometimes frantic portrait of a machine in flux. It may not have made me a country fan, but it did make me a fan of the people pushing that machine in a long-overdue direction. —PR

Erica Vital-Lazar | Baffler | July 19, 2023 | 3,914 words

Do you feel a certain tingle when you come across a great piece of work? I do. Erica Vital-Lazar’s beautiful, braided essays about black holes (both the black holes that exist in the universe and the void that her father created by abandoning her family, lured to Las Vegas) gravitated to my reading brain. gave. Vital-Lazar does not blame, blame, or try to excuse her father’s neglect. She just tries to understand. “Black holes are remnants,” she writes. “Their absence creates an immense weight…a place from which nothing can exist or escape. It is an uncreated space, and what was can never be again.” Pork There is a sense of humanity in the space in which she cares for her aging and sick father, such as cooking turkey sausage instead of a baby and offering unsweetened jam to the man who abdicated his caregiving responsibilities as a child. exist. For an essay that explores absence, Vital-Lazar’s thoughtful observations and sharp prose will satisfy you. —K.S.

Melissa Johnson | Outside | July 18, 2023 | 4,273 words

Don’t squirm as you read Melissa Johnson’s Guatemala travelogue. Her visceral depictions evoke the sticky, itchy, sweaty reality of the jungle and you feel enveloped in it.written jumanji, if you don’t mind. The only romance here lies in the purpose of the trek: a wedding at El Mirador, the ruins of a Mayan city. (The ultimate inconvenient destination wedding.) Ten friends attend, and each suffers hardships along the way, but only Johnson gets bitten by a tick in her vagina, an event she uses to avoid her marriage. It spoke as eloquently as the ceremony itself. Not only is it fun and entertaining, but it’s also an honest reflection on aging and lost time. Not to mention, it’s also a great reminder to remember to bring bug spray on your next jungle trip. —C.W.

audience award

Well, here are the pieces that our readers liked the most this week.