Longreads

This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Analytics issue. SUBSCRIBE TODAY » CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Five weeks before his 50th birthday, Michael Jordan sits behind his desk, overlooking a parking…

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On building a cabin in Trevelín, Argentina:

"I had spent ten years dreaming, three years shopping for land, and now almost two years arranging the construction, which I planned to spend 30 days supervising. Months before the planned January 2007 start, I flew down for ten days to line up a sawmill, open accounts at hardware stores, and coordinate a tight schedule of just-in-time deliveries. Julito vowed to have the site prepped and the foundation built before I returned with Team Sawyer in January, the height of Patagonian summer. We would go straight to the barn-raising scene in Witness where Harrison Ford is clambering all over the roof beams.

"Cut to reality. In January, Beth and I found the site green and lovely—and completely undisturbed. Not a single board, beam, nail, tile, or bolt had arrived, not a clod of dirt had been moved, and Julito and his crew were nowhere to be found—and wouldn't show up until a week later. Team Sawyer drifted in over the next few days. At sunset every night, we marveled at Trevelín's view of the Andes and toasted the coming endeavor. Mornings, we stood around the grassy clearing scuffing our heels. Right away an argument broke out over where to put the hot tub."

Anthony Shadid, a prize-winning foreign correspondent, died at the age of 43 in Syria, while reporting for the New York Times. A beloved and brilliant writer, Shadid spent his two-decade career…

On November 1, 2011, four codgers who gathered at this Waffle House in Toccoa, Georgia, as well as at the Shoney's and in the home of Fred Thomas, were arrested by the FBI for plotting acts of mass…

If the sport of football ever dies, it will die from the outside in. It won't be undone by a labor lockout or a broken business model — football owners know how to make money. Instead, the…

When I was living in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and came back sometime later to see what was left, one of the things I found was the November 1998 issue of Esquire magazine. The cover with…

When Patti Waldmeir discovered a baby in a Shanghai street one winter night, she was told to mind her own business. She didnt... One might easily see such a thing in a Shanghai alleyway and think…

I answered an ad that asked, “Like amusement parks? Want to write about them?” and was called for an interview. Bill, editor-in-chief of Funworld, was enthusiastic about the magazine, the amusement industry, and, particularly, Funworld’s new computers—he called them machines—which were apparently very fast. When the interview was over, he told me the job was mine if I was interested. I was. At the time I knew almost nothing about amusement parks and attractions. Publications assistant was the sort of entry-level position that would give me a chance to learn. I’d file contracts and send copies of Funworld to anybody who requested them. I’d edit articles that no one else wanted to edit, like the twenty-six-page case study on the effects of G-forces on roller-coaster passengers (negligible), which had awaited revision for two years. And the article about shuttle coasters, which began with the sentence “Whooooooosh!”