By Ron Rosenbaum Manhattan Inc. May, 1987 The scene: an informal dinner party on the rooftop of a brownstone in the East Seventies. The people (with one exception): congenial, civilized, charming. The conversation: charming, civilized, congenial. Until … until someone...
By David Bradley Goodlife August, 1985 Not long ago I crossed the Great Divide to attend a conference of writers and other literary types. The theme of the conference was “Literature and The Land”, which is hardly obscure. I mean, while a lot of people in America...
By Marilyn Johnson Life April, 1995 If you take her out of history and plant her in the wilderness, it’s easy to see the person she is. During a dry spell in 1984, she was driving around the Texas hill country with a friend, hunting for fields of wildflowers in bloom....
By Helen Lawrenson From The Hussy’s Handbook 1944 Every once in a while when I am in a nightclub—which is not any oftener than I get asked—I look around me and am suddenly stupefied by the swift, sudden spectacle of women all over the place bending every nerve and...
By Nicholas Pileggi New York Magazine August 26, 1985 Shortly before nine in the morning last March 5, Detective Richard “Bo” Dietl walked into the shield room at Police Headquarters and turned his gold badge over to a young policewoman. She casually tossed it into a...
By Marguerite Del Giudice National Geographic August, 2008 What’s so striking about the ruins of Persepolis in southern Iran, an ancient capital of the Persian Empire that was burned down after being conquered by Alexander the Great, is the absence of violent imagery...
By Helen Lawrenson From The Hussy’s Handbook 1944 One summer night, when I was visiting an uncle and aunt of mine, we were all sitting in the house, talking and listening to the violent rain storm outside. It was very late, and we were about ready to go to bed, when...
By Ron Rosenbaum New West November, 1980 …terrible apprehensions were among the people. —Daniel Defoe A Journal of the Plague Year The captain rapped on the door of my hotel room promptly at 6 a.m. He was eager to get this expedition under way. He had a decision to...
By Ron Rosenbaum Manhattan Inc. November, 1984 “That’s Barbara Walters over there,” Roy Cohn tells me, pointing helpfully to the other corner table along the front wall of Le Cirque. The second-best corner table. Roy’s got the best, the one with the wide-angle view of...
By Helen Lawrenson From The Hussy’s Handbook 1944 In the George Kaufman-Moss Hart drama, Merrily We Roll Along, there was a scene depicting a typical smart New York party. In one corner sits a very stewed lady. As another guest wanders near her, she looks up at him...
By Ron Rosenbaum The New York Times Magazine July 10, 1994 The Heart of the Matter The presence of the Philby papers in London was still a closely guarded secret when I stumbled on them through an inadvertent slip by Graham Greene’s nephew. I’d found him, the nephew,...
By Steve Oney Los Angeles Magazine October 2004 On a July evening several days before the opening of the Democratic Party’s national convention in Boston, Arianna Huffington steers Dr. Justin A. Frank through a throng of people packing the hallway of her $7 million...
