On the evening of November 7, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen sat at her writing desk in her Manhattan townhouse on East 68th Street. A Manila folder lay open in front of her. She had been working since 9:00 that evening. Inside that folder were notes for the chapter her publisher was waiting for — the chapter … Read more
The morning of October 1, 331 BC, began on a carefully flattened plain in northern Mesopotamia. The dust had not yet risen. That would come later. Standing in the front rank of Alexander’s Macedonian phalanx, a soldier could see everything, and everything looked wrong. The Persian line was not a line. It was a horizon. … Read more
For six decades, the story has been repeated as fact: Marilyn Monroe and President John F. Kennedy carried on a secret affair that defined Hollywood scandal and ended in tragedy. Biographers built careers on it. Conspiracy theorists treated it as gospel. Pop culture turned it into legend. But in 2011, an 85-year-old Jerry Lewis sat … Read more
De avond voordat we naar het huis van mijn oma zouden gaan om koekjes te versieren, knapte er iets in mij. Will en ik waren bijna vier maanden niet samen geweest, en dit was ons ritueel, iets wat we al deden sinds we kinderen waren. Abby vroeg weer waar we naartoe gingen, en Will vertelde … Read more
The funeral took place in late August 1968 at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. The mourners included the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII, who rarely appeared in royal circles anymore. He had returned for one of the last times he would stand among the family he had left behind. They were burying Princess … Read more
On the morning of October 4, 1951, a heavy man in a good suit sat down at a table in Joe's Elbow Room, a small restaurant in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. He was waiting for company. Four men arrived and joined him. The conversation was friendly, according to the people who were there. Then the … Read more
On the morning of September 21, 1952, a man was found lying in a gutter on 107th Street in East Harlem. He had been shot. He was not hidden, buried, or dumped in a marsh across the river. He was left at the curb on a residential street where hundreds of people would walk past … Read more
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, did not end with the funeral. For the surviving family, the event marked the beginning of a new and punishing reality. The public saw a widow in black and two small children saluting their father's casket. The private reality was far more complex. The … Read more
In 1920, with the American beer industry shut down by Prohibition, a grieving St. Louis brewery heir sold the rights to the Falstaff beer name for $25,000. That name, borrowed from a Shakespeare character, would go on to become the basis of the third-largest brewing company in the United States, a brand that outsold Budweiser … Read more
Mark Shaw’s investigation into the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Marilyn Monroe began with a chance connection to a famous lawyer. Shaw, a former criminal defense attorney and network television analyst, practiced law with Melvin Belli in San Francisco. Belli represented Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Shaw’s … Read more