This famous piece by Susan Orlean is one of those stories where it’s hard to pick just one great sentence. You find one, and then another, and then another — a rabbit hole of great sentences. But this one … Read more
So I just spent more than an hour trying to track down the best magazine articles about the great Muhammad Ali, only to find that the nice people over at Esquire magazine had already done it for me. Granted, … Read more
Back in 1998, magazine writer Mike Sager was best known for his fearless profiles of drug dealers, crackheads, porn stars, and neo-Nazis. But that year Esquire handed him a very different kind of assignment: Write about … Read more
The last time most of us heard of the Winklevoss twins—hell, the first time we heard of them—was in David Fincher’s acerbic 2010 movie, The Social Network. You remember: Tyler and Cameron (brilliantly portrayed by Armie Hammer), the righteous blue-blood … Read more
Mid February marked the anniversary of Magic Johnson’s 1992 return to the NBA after having retired the previous fall, when he announced he was HIV positive. He turned in a triumphant, dramatic performance at the All-Star Game, scoring 25 points … Read more
“What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s exhaustive account of the 1988 presidential election, took so long to report and write—six years in all—that it wasn’t published until the 1992 election. Clocking in at over 1,000 pages, it’s a … Read more
Esquire marked Trevor Noah’s transition to hosting “The Daily Show” by putting him on the cover of its March 2016 issue (see “Trevor Noah…Is Not Like You”). Noah has to step out of the large shadow of Jon Stewart. Read more
John Sack is an integral part of Esquire lore. This was the guy who sneaked aboard an American landing ship during the Korean War to interview Chinese POWs; the guy who shadowed the grunts of M Company in Fort Dix, … Read more
To help celebrate Floyd Patterson’s birthday, let’s turn for a moment to Esquire Hall of Famer Gay Talese, who called Patterson a “writer’s dream.” Esquire Classic: You wrote more than thirty stories on Floyd Patterson … Read more
Tom Junod Hillary Clinton has changed greatly over the past twenty-five years of public service, as First Lady, then Senator, then Secretary of State, … Read more