In 1975, Jackie O., widow to a president and tycoon, decided to become a literary editor.

During WWII, a bomber crashes into the Pacific and the crewmen begin an epic battle against dehydration, exposure, and endless attacks by sharks. Adapted from Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken.

Anxiety, weight, general well-being—how the first nine months determine the rest of your life.

On Ayn Rand becoming a cult hero to Wall Street insiders and others items that make Matt Taibbi angry.

“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.”

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

According to this excerpt from Woodward’s Obama’s Wars, the president’s military advisors gave him only one option: send an additional 40,000 troops. Obama pushed back.

A Holocaust detective story: could a lampshade pulled from the ruins of Katrina really be Buchenwald artifact made of human remains?

When Bob Dylan met Allen Ginsberg; a chapter from Sean Wilentz’s forthcoming Bob Dylan in America.

An excerpt from a new biography explores the trio of tragedies that struck Dahl’s family just as his career was taking off.

How Warren Beatty seduced the studios into making the comedy Ishtar, which set the modern bar for cinematic debacles. (An excerpt from Peter Biskind’s Star.)

Mysterious, man-made “natural flavor” explains why most fast food—indeed, most of the food Americans eat—tastes the way it does. An early excerpt from Fast Food Nation.

What fragmented reading experiences do to neural circuitry. (It’s not good.)

An excerpt from Night of the Gun, the memoir by New York Times media critic David Carr about his years as a junkie in late-‘80s Minneapolis.

An excerpt from Zak Smith’s We Did Porn detailing an appearance by porn star Sasha Grey on The Tyra Banks Show.

Prohibition couldn’t have happened without Wayne B. Wheeler, who foisted temperance on a thirsty nation 90 years ago.