



1 / 16 Chevron Chevron Photograph from Rolls Press / Popperfoto via Getty “Hiroshima,” by John Hersey (August 31, 1946)

Every week or so, some article from our ninety-one-year-old archive stretches its legs, grabs its shoes—and perhaps its cane—and starts to amble around the Internet. It stops in at Facebook and Twitter, maybe with a hashtag like #longreads. Maybe it shows its face in r/TrueReddit, or in the New Yorker’s Sunday newsletter, or in the Spotlight or Archive sections of newyorker.com. Then it goes back home, where it waits quietly for the occasional greeting from Google.

This year, I’ve decided to make a list of the most-read stories from the New Yorker archive in 2016, measured by average time spent reading and arranged chronologically. A few stories with modern resonance do make an appearance. But this is the rare list of most-read articles with more pieces about running frauds than about the Donald. And, to critics who would accuse this of being just another clickbait list, I would note that the first story is John Hersey’s “Hiroshima.”