Stanford White and Harry Thaw’s battle for the heart of model and chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit in 1906: One warm June night in 1906, Albert Payson Terhune could be found engaged in battle for a telephone booth in the old Madison Square Garden while wearing a tuxedo. He had forcibly removed a man mid-conversation, and […]
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The next phase of George Lucas’s career, the making (and studios’ rejection) of his new Tuskegee Airmen film Red Tails, and who’s really to blame for the “nuking the fridge” idea in the last Indiana Jones film: When I told Lucas that Spielberg had accepted the blame for nuking the fridge, he looked stunned. ‘It’s […]
Another perspective on the city’s struggles, and the attempts to revive it: A recent New York Times article lauded Detroit as a ‘Midwestern Tribeca’ of socially aware folk; but off of its bustling main drag, Corktown is surrounded by Detroit’s burned-out industrial structures and houses, weedy lots, and subsidized housing. For every white entrepreneur in […]
On Gil Scott-Heron’s memoir, The Last Holiday, and a family connection to the poet and musician: Later, in 2005, when Scott-Heron was sent to prison upstate for violating parole, Fred mailed him a leather-bound book — a journal, I guess — with a picture of Scott-Heron from their high school days secreted in the spine. […]
[Fiction] A family of children escape starvation in North Korea: The day the siblings left to find their mother, snow devoured the northern mining town. Houses loomed like ghosts. The government’s face was everywhere: on the sides of a beached cart, above the lintel of the post office, on placards scattered throughout the surrounding mountains […]
On the encouraging signs of change in Burma—from the end of press censorship to the release of some political prisoners. A report from inside, and questions about why the government is doing it: Ever since the country’s longtime dictator, Than Shwe, stepped aside early last year, a remarkable thaw has appeared to be underway in […]
A trip through the “bike-crime underbelly”—and the futility of new technology when it comes to preventing it: The purpose of stealing a bike, after all, is to sell it. SFPD’s McCloskey estimated that 90 percent of bike thieves are drug addicts. In America’s rough streets, there are four forms of currency—cash, sex, drugs, and bicycles. […]
Lessons from inventor Lenn Rockford Hann’s negotiations with companies over a carbon-fiber shoe he patented in 2004: When it came time to talk price with New Balance, Hann set his offer sky-high. He says he meant it as a starting point, but company executives closed discussions. Hartner remains a supporter of the shoe, but says […]
Judith Clark was a new mom when she was arrested, along with three other militants, for armed robbery and murder in 1981. She remains in prison—and her daughter Harriet has no memory of her mother any other way: The prison’s visiting center was her second living room. ‘When they got a new vending machine, it […]
What helmets can’t fix when it comes to concussions and high school football: Because of its national reputation — and extremely well-funded athletic department — Mater Dei has been on the leading edge of concussion prevention and treatment for high school football players. The coaches are vigilant; the equipment is top of the line; the […]
Ten years after the arrival of the first detainees, officials, lawyers, prisoners and soldiers speak out on how it all started—and how difficult it has been to close it: When I first got down to Guantánamo, I, along pretty much with everybody else in my group, thought that we were going to be dealing with […]
Before Wonder Woman there was Miss Fury, the first female superhero, introduced in 1941: Miss Fury was created, written, and drawn by a woman, June Tarpé Mills, who published under the more sexually ambiguous Tarpé Mills. Had Miss Fury entered an enduring canon like DC’s, it’s possible that the template for female superheroes, as well […]
A Dallas murder suspect is also a paranoid schizophrenic, and his changing mental state raises questions about whether he can stand trial: With medication he becomes someone else entirely, capable even of calm rationality. He would have to be induced into a state of synthetic sanity before he could stand trial for a crime that […]
The early origins of separation of church and state in America. Williams was a Puritan minister, banished from Massachusetts, before creating the settlement Providence: He bought the land from the Narragansett Indians and wrote that “having, of a sense of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress, [I] called the place PROVIDENCE, I desired […]
The search for Clifton (Pop) Herring, Jordan’s high school coach, and the truth about the NBA legend’s early days: And so, over the next four years, as Michael Jordan became an Olympic gold medalist, a rookie NBA All-Star and the scorer of 37 points per game, Pop Herring went from suspended to unemployed to unemployable. […]
[Fiction] A young boy plays with the truth as he skips school one day: Your stepfather walks toward you. He takes your chin in his thumb and forefinger, and turns your face back and forth, as though it were a piece of merchandise he was thinking about buying. “You must have fallen pretty easy,” he […]
Three siblings—the two brothers, carpenters, and the sister, a stripper—rob a bank and lead police on a 15-state chase. But what motivated them to do it? PASCO SIBLINGS SOUGHT IN SHOOTING ALSO WANTED IN GEORGIA BANK HEIST. By the evening of August 4, the FBI had issued a press release stating that the three Georgia […]
On modern manufacturing in the U.S. and the unskilled-skilled labor gap—with 92-year-old Standard Motor Products serving as a case study: Across America, many factory floors look radically different than they did 20 years ago: far fewer people, far more high-tech machines, and entirely different demands on the workers who remain. The still-unfolding story of manufacturing’s […]
A man, brought to the U.S. as a toddler, is suddenly deported to Mexico. He’s now trying to get back: The train had covered 10 miles through the high desert when it stopped at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint. An inspector and his canine walked by on the gravel path. Luna stifled his […]
The story of a woman, the husband she vowed to care for, and the complications about how their relationship changed after his severe brain injury: On a Saturday morning in the spring of 2010, Page had arranged for Robert to come home from Sunrise for breakfast. She had asked Robert’s brother Will to drive down […]
[Fiction] An adolescent girl’s discoveries about her beautiful, elusive mother: “At the time, what I saw struck me as a strange dream, one that I managed to forget for many years. I was so angry with my mother for so long. Now I’m old enough to recognize the disillusion I saw dawning on her face […]
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