If president-elect Donald Trump learned anything from his mentor Roy Cohn, it was this: punch first and never apologize. Cohn was notorious for going on the attack—as counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy during the communist witch-hunts of the fifties, and later as a pugnacious attorney for whom the only bad publicity was no publicity. With … Continue reading Don’t Mess With Roy Cohn, by Ken Auletta

Esquire Classic Podcast

Don’t Mess With Roy Cohn, by Ken Auletta

The question is astonishingly simple: In the year 2015, with GPS and satellites and global surveillance everywhere all the time, how does a massive airplane simply go missing? To find the answer, writer Bucky McMahon boarded one of the vessels searching for Malaysia Air 370 in one of the most isolated and treacherous stretches of … Continue reading The Plane at the Bottom of the Ocean, by Bucky McMahon

The Plane at the Bottom of the Ocean, by Bucky McMahon

Published in 1992, Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes: The Way to the White House remains the richest and most unvarnished account of the personal price of running for president. The irony, as Cramer pointed out to C-SPAN shortly after the book came out, is that to become president a candidate must sacrifice the entire life that … Continue reading The Price of Being President, by Richard Ben Cramer

The Price of Being President, by Richard Ben Cramer

Norman Maclean published A River Runs Through It when he was seventy-three, and only after his children implored him to write down the stories about fly-fishing, brotherhood, and the wilds of Montana that he’d told them for years. The resulting novella is a classic of economy and clarity. A few years later, Pete Dexter visited Maclean in … Continue reading The Old Man and the River, by Pete Dexter

The Old Man and the River, by Pete Dexter

Jim Harrison, the novelist and poet who died earlier this year at the age of 78, had a gargantuan, fearless appetite that would make both A.J. Liebling and Anthony Bourdain proud. He wrote about food—about eating, really— in a woolly, baroque style for Esquire’s “The Raw and the Cooked” column. He began one piece with … Continue reading The Days of Wine and Pig Hocks, by Jim Harrison

The Days of Wine and Pig Hocks, by Jim Harrison

12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley discusses Garry Wills’s 1968 profile, “Martin Luther King Jr Is Still on the Case!”

Martin Luther King Jr Is Still on the Case! by Garry Wills

A chronicle of risk and romance on the sidelines of the NBA

Love in the Time of Magic, by E. Jean Carroll

A meeting of two American masters: Robert Noyce and Tom Wolfe.

The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce, by Tom Wolfe

Trust me, he said, and the last great brawling sports team in America did. Twenty years after Thurman Munson’s death, Reggie, Catfish, Goose, Gator, the Boss—and a nation of former boys—still aren’t over it.

The House That Thurman Munson Built, by Michael Paterniti

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up," a series of essays from 1936 about his alcoholism and mental breakdown, set off a genre of confessional writing that persists and thrives today.

The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

When a surgeon cut into Henry Molaison’s skull to treat him for epilepsy, he inadvertently created the most important brain-research subject of our time—a man who could no longer remember, who taught us everything we know about memory. Six decades later, another daring researcher is cutting into Henry’s brain. Another revolution in brain science is about to begin.

The Brain That Changed Everything, by Luke Dittrich

John H. Richardson on our cultural infatuation with celebrity and the humanity that lurks on both sides of the camera lens.

“I, Stalkerazzi” and “Angelina Jolie and the Torture of Fame,” by John H. Richardson

At the end of a glorious career, the defiant legend takes refuge in his most cherished partner—himself.

Nureyev Dancing In His Own Shadow, by Elizabeth Kaye

And some of the most important people in some of the most important places in New York, New Jersey, Southern California and Las Vegas are suddenly developing postnasal drip

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, by Gay Talese

The artist’s life demands solitude, sensitivity, and often a little something to get him through the night. The very same things can destroy him

Styron’s Choices, by Philip Caputo

A timely and revealing update of some of the most groundbreaking narrative journalism ever published by Esquire since its founding in 1933. Presented by PRX and Esquire Magazine.

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Esquire Classic Podcast

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