In 2009, Condé Nast allowed this story to appear in print but refused to publish it online or distribute it in Russia for fear of retribution. The story, which details the intrigue behind the Moscow apartment bombings that allowed Vladimir Putin’s rapid ascension to power, is reprinted on Longform courtesy of the author.
A profile of the Carolina Panthers quarterback.
Life on an oil rig in the Arctic.
A look inside Donald Trump’s portfolio of exclusive real estate properties.
Inside the grand jury proceedings.
A few months after working at Ground Zero, Kurt Sonnenfeld became a suspect in the mysterious and high-profile death of his wife. He got off, barely, and started a new life in South America. But when the U.S. tried to bring him back to face charges, Sonnenfeld went to the local media. The Feds didn’t want him for murder, he said. They wanted to put him away because of what he knew about 9/11.
The adventures of a pro bono gigolo.
How a 27-year-old went from PR underling to gatekeeper.
“Think about that: Kim has so thoroughly monetized the very act of living that the money she earns from being filmed going about her life constitutes a relatively small sum compared with the one she generates from allowing people to see pictures and cartoon drawings of the life she has already filmed. She has figured out how to spin the mundanity of being herself—something billions of people do every day for free—into a more lucrative business than being the most famous rapper in the world.”
Unraveling the story of an amnesiac who doesn’t want to know his past.
In California, Jeff Lee is a business school student at Stanford with an almost unhealthy work ethic and a penchant for selfies. In Malaysia, he’s teaching women how to win beauty pageants.
In Brooklyn’s Brownsville, being in a gang can mean as little as being born on a specific block. Ackquille Pollard spent his final free days as a viral rap sensation, before being jailed as the leader of a sect of Crips.
The author takes a trip to HempCon with her anxious, insomniac, ultra-Orthodox Jewish mother.
He is 69. He is no longer a virtuoso politician. He has been marginalized within his wife’s campaign. Nobody knows what what his role will be if she wins, but everyone agrees that he’s desperate to find out.
Twenty-four years ago, a Missouri father plunged a needle filled with HIV-positive blood into his son’s vein. No one at the time could’ve imagined anything worse. But even more astonishing is the life the son turned out to live.
Summiting one of the world’s toughest peaks gave Julian Torres something an IED blast in Afghanistan had taken away.
A journey into the 1950s.
When you’ve never eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because the idea of peanut butter and jelly touching seems like too much, you turn to legendary chef Daniel Boulud for help.
On Easter Sunday, 2008, a boat called the Alaskan Ranger went down in the Bering Sea. Forty-seven people were left to fend for themselves in 32-degree water. Forty-two survived.
A profile of Garry Shandling.
“Twenty-five years ago, I used to live in fear of Trevor Latham kicking my ass nearly every day. I grew up to be a writer. He grew up to run one of the toughest biker gangs in America. And then I tracked him down.”
“Thug is alone even in a room full of people. He is unapproachable. He radiates volatility. I can't even imagine him making actual, on-purpose eye contact with another human. Looking into a person's eyes—seeking some kind of a connection—is an admission of neediness, and Young Thug would rather be shot dead in the street than need a thing from another human being.”
How a burst blood vessel transformed the mind of a deliberate, controlled chiropractor into that of an utterly unfiltered, massively prolific artist.
An attempt to figure out why, and how, a young pilot named Andreas Günter Lubitz deliberately plunged an airliner into the remote French Alps, killing himself and the other 149 people on board.
In a matter of months she became one of the world’s most famous porn stars. Three years later, she was dead. The rise and fall of Savannah.
