The Ghost Writes Back
Confessions of a Sweet Valley High ghostwriter.
Arts
Head of the Dragon: The Rise of New Shanghai
Shanghai, in 1989 and 2013. Excerpted from A History of Future Cities.
The Armory Show at 100
Lessons from the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art.
Spirit Guide
Reinventing a once-great whisky distillery in Scotland.
The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
Inside the battle for how America snacks.
The Winners History of Rock and Roll
As mainstream rock declines and disappears from the radio, an examination of seven bands who were amongst the biggest of their respective eras.
Freakshow
Welcome to World of Wonder, the Hollywood production company that celebrates “outsiders, 16th-minute celebrities, conspiracy theorists, penis puppeteers, dictators, street hustlers, porn stars, hackers, homicidal club kids, gender deviants, furries, plushies, and Tori Spelling.”
Arts Business Politics World Movies & TV
L’Étranger
France, wealth and the saga of tax exile Gérard Depardieu.
Infectious: Tom Dooley
On the 1866 murder of Laura Foster and the subsequent hanging of Tom Dula.
Cinema Tarantino
The making of Pulp Fiction.
His Saving Grace
How Curtis Duffy overcame his parents’ murder-suicide to become one of the nation’s great chefs.
Susan Miller Rising
A profile of the “smart person’s” astrologer, and the people who believe in horopscopes.
David McCullough: The Art of Biography No. 2
An interview on craft.
Gratuitous Pictures of Your Grief
On the late singer Judee Sill, the virtual cemetery site Find a Grave, and memorials in the age of the Twitter RIP.
Up From Downey
A profile of Richard and Karen Carpenter.
Frank Ocean Can Fly
A profile of Lonny Breaux, post-fame.
We Never Have to Be Alone
Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show’s thrilling, scary, inept performance on German television.
30 Rock Landed on Us
An essay on television and race.
And the Award for the Next HBO Goes to...
On CEO Reed Hastings and the future of Netflix.
The NRA vs. America
The dark money and political power behind the nation’s largest gun group.
Don and Jerry's Blue Period
On the production team of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, who defined the’90s at the box office with films like Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop, then struggled amidst Simpson’s hedonistic excess and the failure of Days of Thunder.
Leo, Prince of the City
A profile of 23-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio (and his rowdy crew).
The Big Cigar
How Bert Schneider, a well-heeled Hollywood producer with a coke problem and a soft spot for radical politics, smuggled Huey Newton, the leader of the Black Panthers who was awaiting trial on a murder charge, into Cuba in 1974.
The Longform Guide to Late Night
The Rules of the Game
A history of the Hollywood publicity racket.
