Link Roundup for 7 March 2012

Time to burn down the backlog of “things I’ve read that I think other people should, too.” The one thing these five pieces have in common is that they’re longer than my usual link roundup fare.

• Evan Hugh details the bizarre life story of sea monkey inventor Harold von Braunhut.
• Michael MacCambridge annotates Gay Talese’s classic Esquire profile of Joe DiMaggio.
• Joe Nocera interviews Sheila Bair, chair of FDIC during the financial crisis of 2008.
• Ernest B. Furgurson lays out Sir Winston Churchill’s alternate history of Confederate victory in the American Civil War.
• And Kathleen McAuliffe explains how your cat is making you crazy. (Mine is doing it by trying to walk on the keyboard while I’m typing this.)