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)

The Man Who Spilled the Secrets

The collaboration between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Web’s notorious information anarchist, and some of the world’s most respected news organizations began at The Guardian, a nearly 200-year-old British paper. What followed was a clash of civilizations—and ambitions—as Guardian editors and their colleagues at The New York Times and other media outlets struggled to corral a whistle-blowing stampede amid growing distrust and anger. With Assange detained in the U.K., the author reveals the story behind the headlines.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jan 6, 2011
Length: 29 minutes (7,338 words)

The Runaway Doctor

When luxury-loving Dr. Mark Weinberger vanished, in 2004, he left in his wake a wife saddled with more than $6 million in debts, a father headed for bankruptcy, and hundreds of patients who say he misdiagnosed them and performed completely unnecessary sinus surgeries. Now “TheNoseDoctor” of Merrillville, Indiana, is facing prison, along with more than 350 malpractice suits, after finally being captured while hiding out in a tent in the Italian Alps. The author investigates charges that a talented young physician became a greedy, mutilating mon

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Dec 22, 2010
Length: 33 minutes (8,477 words)

Topic of Cancer

One fine June day, the author is launching his best-selling memoir, Hitch-22. The next, he’s throwing up backstage at The Daily Show, in a brief bout of denial, before entering the unfamiliar country—with its egalitarian spirit, martial metaphors, and hard bargains of people who have cancer.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Sep 1, 2010
Length: 7 minutes (1,770 words)

Deadly Medicine

Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government’s failure to rein in a lethal profit machine.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Dec 2, 2010
Length: 24 minutes (6,019 words)

The Quaid Conspiracy

They’re spending nights in their car, on the run from the same shadowy cabal—”the Hollywood Star Whackers”—who may have killed Heath Ledger, possibly sabotaged Jeremy Piven, and could now be targeting Lindsay Lohan. No, this is not the plot of Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner Randy Quaid’s latest movie. It is what he and his wife, Evi, swear is really happening to them.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Dec 1, 2010
Length: 25 minutes (6,448 words)

Adrift but Unbroken

When their bomber crashed into the vast Pacific, in 1943, Louis Zamperini, Russell Phillips, and Francis McNamara’s odds were slim to none—even before their food and water ran out and the sharks began attacking. In an excerpt from her first book since Seabiscuit, the author reconstructs a historic struggle for survival.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Nov 11, 2010
Length: 34 minutes (8,698 words)

The Case of the Vanishing Blonde

After a woman living in a hotel in Florida was raped, viciously beaten, and left for dead near the Everglades in 2005, the police investigation quickly went cold. But when the victim sued the Airport Regency, the hotel’s private detective, Ken Brennan, became obsessed with the case: how had the 21-year-old blonde disappeared from her room, unseen by security cameras?

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Nov 8, 2010
Length: 29 minutes (7,421 words)

Crimes of the Art?

Eight years after Larry Rivers’s death, both his pioneering art and his hypersexual private life are getting fresh attention. In the 70s, he filmed his adolescent daughters topless for a documentary, “Growing,” that the younger one, Emma Rivers Tamburlini, says is nothing less than child pornography.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Nov 3, 2010
Length: 28 minutes (7,062 words)

The Unsocial Network

Plunging ratings. Tense negotiations. A bewildered, increasingly outraged Conan O’Brien and an anxiously pragmatic Jay Leno. In this excerpt from his new book, Bill Carter unfurls the behind-the-scenes story of late night’s explosive 2010 showdown. (“What does Jay have on you?” Conan asked, his voice still low, his tone still even. “What does this guy have on you people? What the hell is it about Jay?”)

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Oct 28, 2010
Length: 25 minutes (6,406 words)