If you’re anything like me you sometimes get bored with the normal rotation of sites you visit or subscribe to, and you start wishing you had something a little meatier to tear into. Especially lately since I installed Instapaper on my iPhone I have been looking for great non-fiction to read during downtime. I have been saving articles here and there for quite some time, and thought I’d share some of the best reads that I have found to be available online. And if you know of any others please leave them in the comments, I’m always on the hunt for good in depth articles!
- Jonathan Lebed’s Extracurricular Activities – Written by one of my favorite writers, Michael Lewis. 15 year old kid gets investigated by the SEC for touting stocks online.
- The Things That Carried Him – The story of a dead soldier’s body returning home, from Baghdad to Indiana. Won the National Magazine Award for feature writing.
- Pearls Before Breakfast – A world class musician plays anonymously in a DC subway. Will anyone notice?
- Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage – David Foster Wallace writes about language, something I think he was born to do.
- Against School – A former New York City school teacher writes about public education.
- Final Salute – Rocky Mountain News spends a year following a Marine casualty assistance calls officer – the man who tells loved ones that their loved one has died in service.
- Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? – You will never look at diamonds the same again after reading this.
- Late Bloomers – Malcolm Gladwell is almost always a pretty good read, I particularly enjoyed this piece on precocity and genius, and possibly the lack of correlation.
- Unhappy Meals – Michael Pollan writes about food, in an article that would eventually be expanded into his book “In Defense of Food”.
- A Rough Trade – Martin Amis writes about the pornography industry.
- In the beginning was the command line – Neal Stephenson on computers.
- Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu – Some say this is the finest piece of sports journalism ever written. John Updike writes about Ted Williams.
- Confessions of a Car Salesman – An Edmunds writer goes deep undercover in one of the most compelling and interesting things I’ve ever read.
- Shipping Out (PDF) – David Foster Wallace reports from a cruise.
- The Profits of Doom – A polluted city profits from it’s misfortune.
- The Shipbreakers – One of my favorite non-fiction writers William Langewiesche wrote this (as well as The Profits of Doom above). Concerns one of the most brutal jobs on earth.
- Prison Nation – Originated as a series of message board posts, but up there with anything else on this list, about prison in America.
- Prison Industrial Nation – And to complement Prison Nation, an in depth look at our Prison-Industrial complex from The Atlantic.
- Consider the Lobster – My personal favorite David Foster Wallace article of all time.
- The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved – Hunter had to show up on this list at least once.
- The Power of Praise – The most interesting thing I’ve ever read when it comes to raising children.
- TIME FOR SOME STORIES – Only loosely fits as a piece of non-fiction, but one of the funniest bits of storytelling I’ve ever read online.
- The Cold Hard Facts On Freezing To Death – Outside magazine on occasion has some excellent journalism.
- Ali and his Entourage – A look at Ali after his career faded.
- How we lost the cure for scurvy – Very interesting story that’s really about institutional knowledge
- The Perfect Mark – The incredible story of how a psychotherapist actually fell for a Nigerian 419 scam.
- 1491 – What the Western Hemisphere was like before it became the “New World”.
