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

A quasi-oral history of the party that was JFK’s 1961 inauguration.

The story of Jejoen Bontinck, a Belgian teen-ager who travelled to Syria to fight with radical Islamists.

At 33, Wendy Brown stole her daughter’s name, grabbed a pair of pom-poms, and went back to high school. Then she went to jail.

The story of a newscaster’s suicide.

On a mysterious migrant in a San Diego hospital bed, and the thousands of families who hope that he’s theirs.

“These, I now know, are the details of how my mother died..:”

Disillusioned with fine dining, one of the world’s great chefs took on fast food. It has been harder than he ever imagined.

Investigating the disappearance of a trans teen who hasn’t been seen since 2012.

The story of a Puerto Rican family trying to get settled in Chicago after Hurricane Maria.

They’ve built a hidden society in a state park. Among the haole squatters of Kalalau.

The inside story of how an Ivy League food scientist turned shoddy data into viral studies.

How Jerry Falwell Jr. transformed Liberty University, one of the religious right’s most powerful institutions, into a wildly lucrative online empire.

What does it take to save a 300-pound loggerhead with a horrible injury? Inside the yearlong journey of recovery.

A renowned scholar claimed that he discovered a first-century gospel fragment. Now he’s facing allegations of antiquities theft, cover-up, and fraud.

In an Arkansas jail with one of the America’s largest coronavirus outbreaks, prison terms become death sentences.

How the waters off of LA became a DDT dumping ground.

Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change.

A profile of the singer-songwriter.

When presenting as a man, this “tech bro” entrepreneur was the toast of Silicon Valley—until she stepped into boardrooms as a woman.

A profile of Uruguay President José Mujica, a former revolutionary who’s been shot six times, was imprisoned for 14 years and, since taking office, has shunned the presidential mansion in favor of a small farm while legalizing gay marriage, abortion and marijuana.

He was arrested for pushing his three grandsons so hard on a Grand Canyon hike that rangers feared for their lives. Their account of the summer they spent with their youthful grandpa would include an uncanny understanding of marijuana strains and a stopover in Jamaica.

A profile of Kanye West written in the style of an all-access magazine piece - using only quotes and statements that Kanye West has made on Twitter and other web outlets.

When Zulhumar Isaac’s parents disappeared amid a wave of detentions of ethnic minorities, she had to play a perilous game with the state to get them back.

How the pop star’s father and a team of lawyers seized control of her life—and have held on to it for thirteen years.