Blog Biz

Before electric light, people lived by candle and oil lamp, kept warm by fire, and sent messages across distances by horse and ship. They did not know that a silent force already existed in the world, waiting to be understood. The story begins with a strange observation made thousands of years ago. Ancient Greeks noticed … Read more

In 1889, the California legislature carved a new county out of the southern third of Los Angeles County. They named it for the crop that had made it rich. Orange County, they declared, existed because of the orange. At the time, it seemed like a sure bet: the futures of the county and the fruit … Read more

Tokyo, September 1945. The city lay in ruins, whole districts reduced to ash by firebombing. Of the seven million people who had lived in the capital before the war, only three million remained. In a modest house in Setagaya, General Hideki Tojo waited alone. The wartime prime minister who had ordered the attack on Pearl … Read more

Joan Bennett Kennedy first stepped into the Kennedy world in October 1957, at a Manhattanville College ceremony honoring the late Kathleen Kennedy, the sister who had died in a plane crash nearly a decade earlier. Joan was twenty-one, a music and English major at the Catholic women’s college that had also educated Rose Kennedy and … Read more

In the highlands of Central America, researchers once took blood samples from an entire village. Every single resident—the elderly, young mothers, and children who had never left the valley—gave a sample. When the results came back, something did not add up. Every sample was the same blood type. Not most of them. Not the majority. … Read more

In October 1991, a mother and her seven-year-old son vanished during a weekend hike in Washington State’s Cascade Mountains. Vivien Kellerman, a nurse, had set out with her son Eli on the well-marked Thornton Creek Trail, a six-mile loop she had researched for weeks. Her husband David, fighting a cold, stayed home. She called him … Read more

Jeg har udskiftet to vandvarmere, et tag, tre bilmotorer og et helt køkkengulv i min levetid. Jeg havde ikke regnet med, at min hofte skulle være det næste. Kirurgen, en ung mand ved navn Dr. Leonard, så ud til at være i starten af fyrrerne og talte med den stille selvsikkerhed, som en mand har, … Read more

Un mois après l’enterrement de ma femme, je passais voir mon fils avant de prendre mon avion. Je pensais ne laisser derrière moi qu’une maison vide et des souvenirs douloureux. Puis mon téléphone a sonné. Ma voisine murmura : « J’ai vu quelqu’un creuser derrière chez toi, sous le vieil arbre. Reviens tout de suite. … Read more

Telefonen ringede gennem mørket. Den gennemtrængende lyd flænsede stilheden i stuen. Jeg farede op i den gamle lænestol, og et velkendt jag gik gennem mit venstre knæ, da jeg forsøgte at rejse mig. Væguret viste to om natten. På telefonskærmen blændede navnet Emily op igen og igen. Min datter. Jeg tog telefonen, men før jeg … Read more

Most gunfighters of the American frontier faded into obscurity for a simple reason: they were not particularly good with a gun. The men whose names survive in legend, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, were often only average shots, remembered more for the company they kept or the drama they were caught in than … Read more