Holden Caulfield’s Goddam War

As army sergeant J. D. Salinger hit the beach on D-day, drank with Hemingway in newly liberated Paris, and marched into concentration camps, the hero of The Catcher in the Rye was with him. In an adaptation from his Salinger biography, the author reveals how the war changed both Holden Caulfield and his creator.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jan 22, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,138 words)

Jason Taylor Dedicates The Rest of His Season to His Agent, Gary Wichard

Every NFL player has a first phone call. He’s on the team bus, the game is over, his body’s a wreck and he needs to tell someone about it. Some call their wives or their girlfriends or their buddy or the pizza man. Jason Taylor always calls his agent. After the New York Jets upset the New England Patriots, Taylor—a Jets —called him again. Taylor was on the team bus, wrung out. On one hand, he was now one game from the Super Bowl, a dream come true. On the other hand, his agent, Gary Wichard, hadn’t been sounding well or looking good. He dialed his agent’s number. It played a song by Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin’,” then went to voice mail. Something had to be wrong.

Author: Tom Friend
Source: ESPN
Published: Jan 21, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,778 words)

Back to the Future with Peter Thiel

“Education is a bubble in a classic sense. To call something a bubble, it must be overpriced and there must be an intense belief in it. Housing was a classic bubble, as were tech stocks in the ’90s, because they were both very overvalued, but there was an incredibly widespread belief that almost could not be questioned — you had to own a house in 2005, and you had to be in an equity-market index fund in 1999. Probably the only candidate left for a bubble — at least in the developed world (maybe emerging markets are a bubble) — is education. It’s basically extremely overpriced. People are not getting their money’s worth, objectively, when you do the math.”

Source: National Review
Published: Jan 21, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,053 words)

The Search Party

On Google, its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and CEO Eric Schmidt. “I learned that Google had an interesting management structure,” Philippe Dauman, the C.E.O. of Viacom, says, describing the negotiations that preceded the YouTube lawsuit. “Every time we thought we came down to a certain point, the Google people changed their minds. And they changed the people in the negotiations.” He explains, “I talked to their C.E.O., and then when Eric went down a certain path he had to have a discussion back in Mountain View with his two associates. Often, there would be a total change in direction.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 14, 2008
Length: 24 minutes (6,123 words)

Forever 21’s Fast (and Loose) Fashion Empire

How did the Changs, Korean immigrants who opened their first store in a gritty section of Los Angeles in 1984, become such important players in fast fashion? The family credits its accomplishments to hard work, faith, and frugality, though Forever 21 has not prospered without controversy. The company has been accused many times of not just following the trends but selling copies of clothes created by trendy designers. Some of its suppliers, many of whom are part of a tight-knit Korean-American community of manufacturers and vendors that dominate the garment industry in Los Angeles, have been accused of underpaying their workers. Now Forever 21’s expansion raises a question, both strategic and existential: When is more too much?

Source: Businessweek
Published: Jan 21, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,630 words)

Forty Years Later: How ‘Oregon Trail’ Was Born

With no monitor, the original version of Oregon Trail was played by answering prompts that printed out on a roll of paper. At 10 characters per second, the teletype spat out, “How much do you want to spend on your oxen team?” or, “Do you want to eat (1) poorly (2) moderately or (3) well?” Students typed in the numerical responses, then the program chugged through a few basic formulas and spat out the next prompt along with a status update. “Bad illness—medicine used,” it might say. “Do you want to (1) hunt or (2) continue?”

Source: City Pages
Published: Jan 20, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,278 words)

Playboy Interview: Bill Gates (1994)

PLAYBOY: Does your net worth of multi-billions, despite the fact that it’s mostly in stock and the value varies daily, boggle your mind? GATES: It’s a ridiculous number. But remember, 95 percent of it I’m just going to give away. [Smiles] Don’t tell people to write me letters. I’m saving that for when I’m in my 50s. It’s a lot to give away and it’s going to take time. PLAYBOY: Where will you donate it? GATES: To charitable things, scientific things. I don’t believe in burdening any children I might have with that. They’ll have enough. They’ll be comfortable.

Source: Playboy
Published: Jul 1, 1994
Length: 55 minutes (13,960 words)

Return of the Hit Man

Cradling a cosmopolitan in his plump right hand, Don Kirshner is reminiscing about his former life as a pop-music mogul and getting a little wistful. All the hits, all the bands, all the favors he did for up-and-comers. But here he sits, at the best table in this swanky restaurant, pretty much forgotten. Slighted is a better word for it, or that’s the way he feels, anyway. Yes, the maitre d’ and the waiters here know who he is. And the other retirees in the nearby plush gated community where he lives will pat him on the back and say things like, “This guy is spectacular. Spectacular!” But the rest of the world? “I’m a military secret,” he rasps in a blustery Bronx accent.

Source: Washington Post
Published: Dec 20, 2004
Length: 13 minutes (3,496 words)

The Secrets Behind Your Flowers

In 1967 David Cheever, a graduate student in horticulture at Colorado State University, wrote a term paper titled “Bogotá, Colombia as a Cut-Flower Exporter for World Markets.” The paper suggested that the savanna near Colombia’s capital was an ideal place to grow flowers to sell in the United States. After graduating, Cheever put his theories into practice. He and three partners invested $25,000 apiece to start a business in Colombia called Floramérica, which applied assembly-line practices and modern shipping techniques at greenhouses close to Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport.

Source: Smithsonian
Published: Jan 20, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,052 words)

‘Knifed’: Sargent Shriver and the 1968 VP Nomination

In the spring of 1968 Sargent Shriver—the founding director of the Peace Corps, the head of Johnson’s War on Poverty, and, as the husband of Eunice Kennedy, a brother-in-law of John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy—was appointed U.S. ambassador to France. His appointment was not without controversy in the upper reaches of the Democratic Party—and in his own extended family.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: May 1, 2004
Length: 16 minutes (4,022 words)