The Longformist
Vol. 5, June 2026
Hello and welcome to The Longformist, my newsletter of the best longform journalism published over the past month (plus a podcast and two non-timely book recs.) I am an investigative reporter based in San Diego. As a reader, I gravitate towards politics, business, crime and history–the more reporter-on-the-ground the better. If that sounds like your interests too, then please subscribe and share.
-Brent Crane
The Paperboy’s Secret, Peter Hessler, the New Yorker
Hessler brings us to his boyhood delivering papers in rural Missouri before a haunting twist.“In boyhood, guilt was a constant companion. It tagged along wherever I went; there was always something I had done, some hidden mistake or private atrocity, that was on the verge of being discovered.”
Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, New York Times Magazine
One shudders at the amount of journalistic legwork needed to pull off this intimate, in-the-room account of a White House scandal. “To their great surprise — and growing disquiet — Trump’s old tricks of deflection and denial weren’t working.”
The World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes, Eli Saslow, the New York Times
Saslow, a very humane reporter, delivers yet again with another poignant and timely piece. “This technology is being weaponized against us,” he told the students. “The train has left the station. It’s accelerating at a speed that’s unbelievable.”
Sam Bankman-Fried’s Prison Experiment, Simon van Zuylen-Wood, New York
This was super interesting less for the particular details of SBF’s situation and more so for the incredible details of everyday life in a high-profile prison. “Inmates tend to describe Bankman-Fried as an appealingly placid character. ‘You tell him, ‘Yo, Sam, you bustin’ ass at Ping-Pong,’ he be like, ‘Yep,’’ G Lock said.”
Trump Solo, Mark Singer, the New Yorker
Including this prescient 1997 profile of Donald Trump in honor of Mark Singer, a longtime New Yorker reporter, who died this past month. “His modus operandi had a sharp focus: fly the flag, never budge from the premise that the universe revolves around you, and, above all, stay in character.”
Novel
Three Tales, Gustave Flaubert (1877)
I had the pleasure of reading these flawless short stories by the French master Flaubert while traveling through Provence recently. Each tale, though very different from the others, sticks with you. “He kissed her once more and she vanished into the darkness.”
Non-fiction book
Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain, Michael Paterniti (2000)
I’d devoured most of Paterniti’s incredible magazine stories before reading this delightful travelogue. He recounts a journey transporting Albert Einstein’s brain across America–surely has one of the strangest premises for a travel book. “At first, you fall in love. You wake in the morning woozy and your twilight is lit with astral violet light.”
Podcast
The Cuba Quagmire, What Really Matters with Walter Russell Mead