With her new book, the model tries to escape the oppressions of the male gaze. So our writer is keeping some of her secrets.

“When it comes down to it, really, genes don’t make you who you are. Gene expression does. And gene expression varies depending on the life you live.”

What it’s like to work for, compete against, and find out you’re the biological father of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. An excerpt from The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

“The only problem is he was so successful that Hollywood decided to devour his Xanadu, with premium vodka parties and assistants scouring the Park City Albertsons for Fiji water. ‘It makes me fucking nuts,’ says Redford.”

An engineering team races to create a next-generation computer.

The first installment of The Soul of a New Machine.

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.

Fifty years ago, Rona Barrett forged a Hollywood gossip empire. Then she left it all behind, her innovations attributed to others, her legacy almost entirely overlooked.

The author takes a trip to HempCon with her anxious, insomniac, ultra-Orthodox Jewish mother.

“The patron saint of adult thumb-suckers is a 65-year-old Long Island salesman who looks strikingly like Hunter S. Thompson, down to the tinted aviator sunglasses and bald spot.”

“Oh God, everybody hates Jane Austen. They don’t have the balls to say it.”

Dr. Elisabeth Targ became famous for running scientific experiments that appeared to prove the healing power of faith. Then she got sick and became a test subject herself.

“Dan Seavey stepped ashore the docks of Grand Haven, Michigan, armed with two of the most dangerous weapons known to man: booze and bad intentions.” The story of the early 20th century’s fiercest Great Lakes pirate.

Montaous Walton couldn’t throw, catch or hit. But he wanted to be a ballplayer. And with the help of the internet, the media, and an ambitious young agent, that’s what he briefly became.

An interview with the artchitects responsible for Stuttgart’s train station, Hamburg’s concert house and Berlin’s airport, three projects “currently competing to be seen as the country’s most disastrous.”

One man's transition from military to civilian life.

Previously: Eli Saslow on the Longform Podcast.

Why Parks Middle School decided to cheat.

“I did a few days on Franco’s As I Lay Dying, and the vibe on the set was very heavy and serious. The only thing I can equate it to is tripping with a bunch of your friends.”

Feeling abandoned by America, families fight to save their children from ISIS.

A trip to the South African Million Dollar Pigeon Race.

Inside Zappos as it transitions to something called a “Teal organization” that involves no managers and what amounts scouting merit badges and something called “People Points.”

Fuzzy memories of a house overlooking the Sunset Strip that played host to a generation of comics—including Sam Kinison, Andrew Dice Clay, and Robin Williams—launching dozens of careers and about as many drug problems.

How a tattooed video store clerk with a history of drinking and drug use ended up at an Islamic self-help class leading to the birth of ISIS.

How the Mast Brothers fooled people into paying $10 a bar for mediocre chocolate, and how a food blogger was able to figure it out.

American demand for drugs gave birth to the cartel war that is paralyzing Mexico, but American guns purchased legally across the Southwest and smuggled over the border have made it staggeringly lethal.