Longreads

There was a time when Lenny Cooke was the top basketball prospect in the country. But poor decisions and injuries intervened. STONY CREEK, Va. — On an otherwise lazy Sunday, dinner took hours to…

How financial and personal pressure took a toll on an entrepreneur:

"Before the fundraising, Sherman would push himself and others to raise as much money as possible for their businesses. After the financing closed, he began referring to venture capital as a 'fraud' and a 'sham.'

"Employees could tell something was off when Sherman announced the financing to the team.

"'He said, "This is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. And I hope to not have to raise more money for a very long time,"' a source recalls.

"Another source also recalled Sherman saying something alarming about this last round:

"'He said, "I had no business raising that last round of financing. I hadn't made our metrics or our terms—not anything near it. But I got it done."'"

Published in the April 2013 issue For as long as anyone can remember, Monday night has been Manly Night at the Playboy Mansion. A little after five o'clock, nine or ten of Hugh Hefner's best friends…

The pitch was simple: “John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Blues Brothers, how about it?” But the film The Blues Brothers became a nightmare for Universal Pictures, wildly off schedule and over budget, its…

The story of Lost makes no sense. And by that I don't mean the story on the show — though this is the point where you can feel free to insert jokes about the numbers, the outrigger shootout,…

The players at Table 25 fought first over the choice of pawns. Doug Herold, a forty-four-year-old real estate appraiser, settled on the car. The player across from him, a shark-eyed IT recruiter…

Women Rihanna Sexiest Woman Alive 2011 Kate Upton Video Naked Women of Esquire Megan Fox More

Originally published in the June 1997 issue There is no name on the mailbox at the bottom of the driveway. It's the only mailbox on the route with no name. The house above the driveway is screened…

Aurich Lawson Apple's traditional desktop computing business has suffered many indignities over the past decade. Once Apple's flagship product line, the Mac first found itself playing second fiddle…