Autumn and the Plot Against Me

Going deeper, a file called “Autumn Properties” reveals only that it’s a five-kilobyte Windows Theme File. When I try to find out what a theme file is, the Windows Help and Support Center suggests, “Check your spelling.” Well, hell, somebody at Microsoft ought to know. As it turns out, if they do, they’re not telling. Curiosity becomes yearning, and yearning becomes obsession. Several friends are drawn into my search. I no longer want merely to find Autumn and go there. I now want to go there and look for a little place to live not far from that leaf-covered path. Photo editors, editor editors, fact-checkers, researchers, computer guys and computer dolls—my motley, shifting, devoted crew come to be known as Team Autumn.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Feb 19, 2007
Length: 8 minutes (2,028 words)

It’s the Economy, Dummkopf!

With Greece and Ireland in economic shreds, while Portugal, Spain, and perhaps even Italy head south, only one nation can save Europe from financial Armageddon: a highly reluctant Germany. The ironies—like the fact that bankers from Düsseldorf were the ultimate patsies in Wall Street’s con game—pile up quickly as Michael Lewis investigates German attitudes toward money, excrement, and the country’s Nazi past, all of which help explain its peculiar new status.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Aug 10, 2011
Length: 38 minutes (9,622 words)

Enter the Cyber-Dragon

China’s aggressive campaign of cyber-espionage began about a decade ago, with attacks on U.S. government agencies. (The details have still not been divulged.) Then China broadened the scope of its efforts, infiltrating the civilian sector in order to steal intellectual property and gain competitive advantage over Western companies. Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at McAfee, who gave Aurora and Night Dragon their names and has written definitive studies of A.P.T. attacks, says that “today we see pretty much any company that has valuable intellectual property or trade secrets of any kind being pilfered continually, all day long, every day, relentlessly.”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Aug 2, 2011
Length: 25 minutes (6,411 words)

The War for Catch-22

The tragicomic 1961 novel that sprang from Joseph Heller’s experience as a W.W. II bombardier mystified and offended many of the publishing professionals who saw it first. But thanks to a fledgling agent, Candida Donadio, and a young editor, Robert Gottlieb, it would eventually be recognized as one of the greatest anti-war books ever written. In an adaptation from his Heller biography, Tracy Daugherty recalls the tortured eight-year genesis of Catch-22 and its ultimate triumph.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Aug 20, 2011
Length: 24 minutes (6,112 words)

Groupon Therapy

Take the example of a Groupon write-up that mentioned that hummingbirds come from cocoons. A reader wrote to Groupon customer service to point out that hummingbirds don’t actually come from cocoons. A Groupon rep wrote back: “Thanks for your email and I’m sorry for any confusion. Hummingbirds do come from cocoons.” The frustrated reader reached out to Ross Hawkins, executive director of the Hummingbird Society, who wrote an e-mail to the reader and to Groupon saying, “Hummingbirds are birds, not insects. They come from eggs.”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jul 5, 2011
Length: 23 minutes (5,780 words)

The Trial of the Suicide Doctor

(1991) Did Dr. Jack Kevorkian do the right thing when he helped an Alzheimer’s patient end her own life with his homemade “Mercy Machine”? As the issue of medically assisted suicide hits the headlines again, he vows to continue his crusade for “planned death” for the terminally ill. But is he Socrates or Mengele? The author investigates the career of a medical heretic.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: May 3, 1991
Length: 53 minutes (13,360 words)

Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door

Even as celebrity activists such as Emma Thompson, Demi Moore, and Mira Sorvino raise awareness about commercial sex trafficking, survivor Rachel Lloyd publishes her memoir Girls Like Us, and the Senate introduces a new bipartisan bill for victim support, the problem proliferates across continents, in casinos, on streets, and directly into your mobile device. And, as Amy Fine Collins shows, human trafficking is much closer to home than you think; victims, younger than ever, are just as likely to be the homegrown American girl next door as illegally imported foreigners.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: May 24, 2011
Length: 42 minutes (10,703 words)

The Dark Arts

It started when the News of the World hacked into the voice mails of the British royal household, in 2005, touching off a scandal that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.—and, apparently, the British authorities—tried to contain. After a score of lawsuits and new arrests, the cover-up is falling apart.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: May 10, 2011
Length: 30 minutes (7,508 words)

Unspoken Truths

Until cancer attacked his vocal cords, the author didn’t fully appreciate what was meant by “a writer’s voice,” or the essential link between speech and prose. As a man who loved to talk, he turns to the masters of such conversation, both in history and in his own circle.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: May 10, 2011
Length: 7 minutes (1,979 words)

Goldman’s Alpha War

Steve Friedman’s decision to quit as chairman of Goldman Sachs, in 1994, during one of its darkest hours, stunned and angered his partners. And despite Friedman’s maneuverings, it created a leadership crisis as the mismatched team of Jon Corzine (future New Jersey governor) and Henry Paulson (future Treasury secretary) took the helm. In an adaptation from his book on Goldman, William D. Cohan reveals how secret merger discussions put the expansive trader and the hardheaded banker on a collision course, setting the stage for the firm it would soon become.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Apr 15, 2011
Length: 35 minutes (8,931 words)