Fear and Self-Loathing in Las Vegas
Retracing Hunter S. Thompson’s famous steps, 40 years later.
Retracing Hunter S. Thompson’s famous steps, 40 years later.
Zach Baron The Daily Oct 2011 55min Permalink
His complete financial disaster tourism series for Vanity Fair, to date.
Michael Lewis Vanity Fair Nov 2011 3h45min Permalink
The Sinaloa cartel was flooding cocaine across the border. The DEA was listening. A four-part series based on hundreds of pages of transcripts from intercepted calls, court testimony, and investigative reports.
Richard Marosi The Los Angeles Times Jul 2011 35min Permalink
An investigation of human trafficking and the international sex trade.
Sean Flynn GQ Mar 2007 1h20min Permalink
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It was the confluence of two streams of development that transformed Ted Kaczynski into the Unabomber. One stream was personal, fed by his anger toward his family and those who he felt had slighted or hurt him, in high school and college. The other derived from his philosophical critique of society and its institutions, and reflected the culture of despair he encountered at Harvard and later.
Alston Chase The Atlantic Jun 2000 1h10min Permalink
Andrew MacGregor Marshall, a longtime Reuters reporter based in Thailand, resigned and forfeited his ability to enter the country in order to report on the revelations about the Thai royal family and military contained within the Wikileaks “Cablegate” dump.
Thailand has the world's harshest lèse majesté law. Any insult to Bhumibol, Queen Sirikit or their son Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, is punishable by three to 15 years in jail.
The cables reveal a toxic power struggle between elected officials, the military, and the monarchy, with the huge shadow of exiled telecommunications billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra looming over the country’s post-King Bhumibol future.
The impending end of his reign has sparked intense national anxiety in Thailand. King Bhumibol's son and heir, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, has a reputation for being a cruel and corrupt womanizer. A notorious video showing a birthday party for his pet poodle Foo Foo -- who holds the rank of Air Chief Marshal -- has been widely circulated in Thailand; in it, the prince's third wife, Princess Srirasmi, dressed only in a thong, eats the dog's birthday cake off the floor while liveried servants look on.
Editor’s Note: Marshall’s findings will be published as a 4-part series, hosted here by the permission of the author, and re-publishable through a Creative Commons license. His writings on the topic have already reached near book length, for a good overview, see Marshall’s introduction in Foreign Policy.
Andrew MacGregor Marshall Creative Commons Jun 2011 3h35min Permalink
A Monrovia travelogue:
Even Liberia's roots are sunk in bad faith. Of the first wave of emigrants, half died of yellow fever. By the end of the 1820s a small colony of 3,000 souls survived. In Liberia they built a facsimile life: plantation-style homes, white-spired churches. Hostile local Malinke tribes resented their arrival and expansion; sporadic armed battle was common. When the ACS went bankrupt in the 1840s, they demanded the 'Country of Liberia' declare its independence.
Zadie Smith The Guardian Apr 2007 30min Permalink
It was one of the most brutal attacks the cops had ever seen. It also might have sent an innocent man to prison.
Christopher Goffard The Los Angeles Times Jun 2011 30min Permalink
Noel Morris’s place in history? Noel Morris was my older brother, who had dropped out of MIT and spent most of his waking hours holed up in an apartment working at a computer terminal. This was in the ‘60s, long before there was anything close to a home computer. The name Tom Van Vleck was not unfamiliar. He was a friend of my brother’s who worked with him at MIT in those days. I called him.
Errol Morris New York Times Jun 2011 1h25min Permalink
A two-part breakdown of how mental illness is diagnosed and treated.
Marcia Angell New York Review of Books Jul 2011 35min Permalink
"For example, I remember reading Hemingway and loving his work so much—but then at some point, realizing that my then-current life (or parts of it) would not be representable via his prose style. Living in Amarillo, Texas, working as a groundsman at an apartment complex, with strippers for pals around the complex, goofball drunks recently laid off from the nuclear plant accosting me at night when I played in our comical country band, a certain quality of West Texas lunatic-speak I was hearing, full of way off-base dreams and aspirations—I just couldn’t hear that American in Hem-speak. And that kind of moment is gold for a young writer: the door starts to open, just a crack."
George Saunders, Patrick Dacey BOMB Magazine Jun 2011 40min Permalink
America's fascination with murder has not yet extended to its aftermath. As a result, the victims' survivors must seek comfort from one another.
Eric Schlosser The Atlantic Sep 1997 35min Permalink
Inside Florence, Colorado’s ADX prison, possibly one of the most isolated places on Earth, where Tommy Silverstein has spent the last 27 years without human contact.
James Ridgeway, Jean Casella Solitary Watch Feb 2011 30min Permalink
As announced last night. Click here for the full list of nominees.
Chris Heath, Jane Mayer, John Miller, Lawrence Wright, Peter Bergen, Tom Junod Sep 2002
Sep 2002 Permalink
NYT journalist David Rohde’s alternately terrifying and absurd first person account of his kidnapping en route to an interview in Southern Afghanistan and the subsequent seven months he, along with his translator and driver, spent in captivity in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
David Rohde New York Times Oct 2009 1h Permalink
Best Article Crime World Religion
Twenty-five years ago, a guru from India showed up in rural Oregon with 2,000 followers. Here’s what happened next: they legally turned their multi-million dollar ranch into an incorporated city, imported homeless people to swing local votes, poisoned hundreds and attempted to assassinate the state’s U.S. attorney.
Les Zaitz The Oregonian Apr 2011 30min Permalink
Despite no hurricanes in five years, Florida insurers are demanding yet more money from homeowners. At the same time, the capital that insurers have on hand to pay claims has shrunk. One reporter spent a year trying to figure out why.
Paige St. John The Sarasota Herald-Tribune Dec 2010 1h10min Permalink
A series on how some Wall Street bankers, seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of their clients and sometimes even their own firms, at first delayed but then worsened the financial crisis.
Jake Bernstein, Jesse Eisinger ProPublica Jan 2010 55min Permalink
On a particularly bloody April weekend in 2008 when 40 people were shot, seven fatally. Not one has faced charges.
Frank Main, Mark Konkol The Chicago Sun-Times Jul 2010 Permalink
Nicholas Volker is a little boy with a rare, devastating disease. In a desperate bid to save his life, Wisconsin doctors must decide: Is it time to push medicine’s frontier?
On the 2009 sinking of a scallop boat; a newly minted Pulitzer winner.
Amy Ellis Nutt The Newark Star-Ledger Nov 2010 1h30min Permalink
On Russia’s faltering justice system.
Clifford J. Levey, Ellen Barry New York Times Jan 2010 30min Permalink
Benjamin Wallace GQ 50min Permalink