Pangolins, Cleveland and Commercials
The most read stories of the week from the Gentle Reader Community
Tales of historical injustices, meditations on cosmopolitanism and unsolved murder mysteries gripped Gentle Readers this week. The common theme these stories share is that they all try to make sense of an increasingly nonsensical world.
Every week, Gentle Readers use our app to discover and enjoy the most compelling writing the internet has to offer. You can see what they loved reading below. The links will open in the Gentle Reader app, a quiet place to catch up on the week's best reads.
Top reads of the week on Gentle Reader
The Importance of Elsewhere
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Foreign Affairs
A case for cosmopolitanism.
An Honest Living
Steve Salaita, No Flags No Slogans
What is it like to go from a tenured professorship to an hourly wage driving buses?
Transforming a Tiny Mexican Town into an Iconic Hollywood Backdrop
W.K. Stratton, Lit Hub
Behind the scenes of Sam Peckinpah’s classic, The Wild Bunch.
For the pangolin
Sam Kriss, Idiot Joy Showland
If we can save just one living god, it should be the pangolin.
Cleveland In 1954
Mark Bechtel, Sports Illustrated
In 1954, Cleveland’s biggest star became embroiled in a sensational murder trial that riveted the nation.
Touch
Poppy Sebag-Montefiore, Granta
‘In China, touch had its own language, and the rules were the opposite of the ones I knew at home’
Toward a Theory of the American TV Commercial of, Oh, Say, About 1990
Ian Dreiblatt, Believer Magazine
If a breakfast cereal could speak, we would not understand it
The Birmingham Bombers
Chris Mullin, LRB
Almost 45 years after an IRA bomb killed 21 people in Birmingham, an inquest into finding those responsible has been opened.
Ricky Jay, the Magician with an Edge
Michael Chabon, The Paris Review
Ricky was an artist and scholar with a fearsome intellect and a biting wit. He was also a surprisingly sweet and gentle soul.
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