If Annie Leibovitz sold her work through the traditional channels of the art world, she would have amassed a small fortune. But at the tail end of a career that has snubbed art galleries and collectors, she is destitute.

“I hate classical music: not the thing but the name. It traps a tenaciously living art in a theme park of the past. It cancels out the possibility that music in the spirit of Beethoven could still be created today.”

A single-page version of Shalhoup’s reporting on the Black Mafia Family, one of the largest cocaine empires in American history.

Booker winner Howard Jacobson on the bumper crop of sex worker memoirs and what they say about our understanding of paid sex.

Behind the scenes of Conan vs. Leno. An excerpt from The War for Late Night.

Tony Kushner and the burdens of being one of the last public intellectuals in American theater.

As CEO of HBO, Chris Albrecht was responsible for putting The Wire, The Sopranos, and Sex and the City on the air. Then he choked his girlfriend outside a Vegas casino, got fired, and took a job running Starz.

An interview with R. Crumb on how he adapted Genesis into comic form.

Featuring the debut of the “Ghost Sex Defense.”

The “Shaggy Defense,” the “Little Man Defense,” and more—live from R. Kelly’s 2008 child pornography trial.

The life and times of female comedy LP sensation Rusty Warren, whose bawdy hits like ‘Knockers Up’ commanded the charts and the lounges of the 1960s Midwest.

Tony Kaye was one of the biggest commercial directors of his time. Then he directed American History X and, by his own admission, completely lost his mind.

Four years after a disastrous MTV performance had led him to avoid the public, Rose was back on stage.

Eleven books into his planned thirteen book The Wheel of Time cycle, the most popular fantasy series since Lord of the Rings, Robert Jordan saw death on his own horizon and planned accordingly. A 31-year-old former Mormon missionary inherited his universe.

A profile of the perpetually disappointed Alec Baldwin.

How the mind behind Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto plans to push gaming further.

Ten years ago, Esquire did a piece about Harvard Law grads who had eschewed their degrees. One of them was the late comedian.

The world’s most renowned chef, Ferran Adrià, says that the only way he can push forward the art form of cooking is to close his own restaurant.

Behind the scenes with Kenny Powers, on set filming the 2nd run of Eastbound & Down, probably the only American TV series that would set an entire season in Mexico.

A profile of Sorkin, who wrote The Social Network. “I don’t feel like a nerd,” he says, “but I think I understand them.”

An 1992 interview with Martin Scorsese. On Goodfellas, “I figured to do it as if it was one long trailer, where you just propel the action and you get an exhilaration, a rush of the lifestyle.”

An oral history of Goodfellas.

At three NYC comedy theater/schools, students and students-turned-instructors (a “benign pyramid scheme”) pursue the elusive simulacrum of human interaction that is longform improvisation.

A 2006 profile of Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook opened from a college-only site to a public social network.

The writer (Aaron Sorkin), director (David Fincher), and actors (Jesse Eisenberg & Justin Timberlake) of The Social Network on dramatizing the real story of a 20 year old into “the Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies.”