Welcome to the New Normal W hen I was 12 I begged for, and got, the Time-Life Enchanted World Series. The first book on ghosts had a line that tickled not only my fantasy-novel-addled brain, but also my budding writerly instinct. We fear ghosts, according to Ghosts, because their gazes say to us:…

What comes to mind when you think of the French Foreign Legion? Most likely men struggling through the desert in heavy blue coats and white peaked caps. Men who joined up after a lifetime of crime, fighting valiantly, then leaving the Legion to become tough, faceless mercenaries trading on their…

Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner were willing to countenance government intervention when markets failed. Their actions outraged both Republicans and Democrats. Credit Illustrations by Mark Ulriksen FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 Let’s don’t be alarmist. The most important week in American…

A portrait of David Swensen at Yale. Mr. Swensen and former protégés oversee nearly $100 billion in endowment money at many top universities. Driely Schwartz Vieira for The New York Times As he has done for decades, once a week David F. Swensen convenes his staff — including his cadre of apprentices…

Audio brought to you by curio.io , a Lapham’s Quarterly partner H artwick College didn’t really mean to annihilate the U.S. economy. A small liberal-arts school in the Catskills, Hartwick is the kind of sleepy institution that local worthies were in the habit of founding back in the 1790s; it counts…

Audio brought to you by curio.io , a Lapham’s Quarterly partner I t was once said of Voltaire , by his friend the Marquis d’Argenson, that “our great poet forever has one foot on Mount Parnassus and the other in the rue Quincampoix.” The rue Quincampoix was the Wall Street of eighteenth-century…

-- An MIT Blackjack Team perspective The mathematics of probability that govern the trade-offs of risk and reward are fundamentally counter-intuitive. The reason that societies ban pyramid schemes outright, instead of relying on the market to make them unprofitable, is that most people trust their…

G ross Domestic Product is the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a year. It is, today, the standard snapshot of a country’s economy. But does it deserve this position? After all, it focuses on economic activity while ignoring many of the consequences of that…

Reserve your copy of the hand numbered, limited edition hardcover reprint of Issue 1. Only 750 copies made in total! FREE SHIPPING to anywhere in the world. Interview Editor’s note : An updated version of this interview, including new images and work, is featured in print in The Great Discontent,…

DESERT STORM The Foreign Legion in North Africa in the 1950s. No other force in the world has known so much war for so long., From Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images. Digital colorization by Lorna Clark. I. The Farm The word “foreign” in the name French Foreign Legion does not refer to faraway…

The International Banking Corporation, in Bahrain, generated billions of dollars while issuing a series of fake loans. Credit Illustration by Shout When Glenn Stewart enrolled at the University of Oxford, in 1975, he was not a typical first-year student: a twenty-year-old American with mediocre…

Ray Dalio has an uncanny ability to anticipate economic trends. Critics say that he runs a cult. Credit Photograph by Platon Ray Dalio, the sixty-one-year-old founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund, is tall and somewhat gaunt, with an expressive, lined face, gray-blue…

Modern Love By TIM BOOMER When my relationship unraveled nearly two years ago, I decided to suspend my career as an actuary in Boston and take a long vacation in Costa Rica, where I planned to learn how to surf and do yoga. Yes, it was the most clichéd response possible for a heartbroken 32-year-old…

El Chapo escaped from a maximum-security prison and evaded many attempts at capture, often hiding out in the Sierra Madre. Credit Clockwise from top left: Alfredo Estrella / AFP / Getty; Greg Mathieson / Mai / Mai / Time Life Pictures / Getty; Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP / Getty; Nikolai Golovanoff /…

Illustration by Kjell Reigstad This story was funded by Longreads Members Join and help support great storytelling Frances Leech | Vintage | March 2013 | 14 minutes (3378 words) The Longreads Exclusive below is based on Frances Leech’s ebook of the same name, published in 2013 by Vintage UK. *** To…

GQ Longform The Great Paper Caper ‣ Years of running drugs and boosting cars left FRANK BOURASSA thinking: There's got to be an easier way to earn a dishonest living. That's when he nerved up the idea to make his fortune. (Literally.) Which is how Frank became the most prolific counterfeiter in…

Below are notes from Hillhouse Capital's Lei Zhang 's lecture at Columbia Business School courtesy of Zong Z. Peng . Notes From Lei Zhang's Lecture at Columbia Business School In the high flying world of investing, Lei Zhang maintains a relatively low profile. Yet since he was seeded by David Swesen…

Calamity is commonplace in Iceland, and rescue is sanctified. “People think of the rescue teams as the Guardians of the Galaxy,” a mountain guide said. “They forget these are normal people.” Above: a volunteer from the Hella rescue team during a drill. Credit Photograph by Benjamin Lowy / Getty…

As I follow Neil Shen into the head office of DJI, the largest drone company in the world, its staff greet him with bowed heads. Wearing a black shirt, grey slacks and black Italian-made loafers, the 47-year-old is no stranger to this kind of reception. Shen is one of China’s most successful…

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an…

They’re so much more than just the hellish yin to drinking’s yang. Tim Davis for The New York Times I used to loathe hangovers. I used to keep my bedside table stacked with bananas, Pedialyte, do-­it-­yourself guides to bootleg saline. Home from nights out, I used to dis- and replace fluids with the…

L et me take you, dear boy,” said McHintry, “to the best little bar in Manhattan.” I could have told him Donna was expecting me home in good time to find out how my first day in the new job had gone. I could have told him that anyway I never drank much, not just because Donna disapproved of it but…

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Software has been around since the 1940s. Which means that people have been faking their way through meetings about software, and the code that builds it, for generations. Now that software lives in our pockets, runs our cars and homes, and dominates our waking lives, ignorance is no longer…

GQ Style Grooming Women Entertainment Culture Video Subscribe Now Get the magazine Get Even More GQ this month 12 Issues for $12 Let's do it Newsletter Search Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy Coats 31 Ways to Crush Your Outerwear Game this October 32 Photos Fall Trends Politics…

Subscribe to FT.com Subscribe to read: Jacob Wallenberg, Investor head with more influence than money Already a subscriber? Sign in here Newspaper + Premium Digital $11.77 per week * Select All the benefits of a Premium Digital Subscription, plus: Free delivery to your home or office, Monday to…

The house’s owners have built a vast basement that amounts to an underground village. Credit Illustration by Michael Kirkham Witanhurst, London’s largest private house, was built between 1913 and 1920 on an eleven-acre plot in Highgate, a wealthy hilltop neighborhood north of the city center. First…

After about an hour of weaving up and down the winding, mountainous, two-lane highway that is route 58 , eastbound from San Luis Obispo, I honestly started to wonder where 9 million solar panels — one of the world’s largest operating solar panel farms that was built in this region — could be hiding.…

Finance and economics BOTH financiers and economists still get the blame for the 2007-2009 financial crisis: the first group for causing it and the second for not predicting it. As it turns out, the two issues are connected. The economists failed to understand the importance of finance and…

I turned 30 last week and a friend asked me if I'd figured out any life advice in the past decade worth passing on. I'm somewhat hesitant to publish this because I think these lists usually seem hollow, but here is a cleaned up version of my answer: 1) Never put your family, friends, or significant…

Om Malik: I’ve been reading about you, and I have been fascinated by your progress and more importantly how you have conducted your business. Where did you find the inspiration to follow this path? Brunello Cucinelli: From the teary eyes of my father. When we were living in the countryside, the…

Axel Dumas, the 44-year-old chief executive of Hermès and a sixth-generation member of the family who founded the house in 1837, wants to have lunch in the private dining room of the company’s Paris headquarters and shop at 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. And so I arrive, via the shop’s main…

Astro Teller says that at Google[x], failure is indeed an option. So is changing the world. Google has long declared itself an unconventional company. But its division that takes on long-term, risky projects, Google[x], makes the rest of the company look pretty staid. Now led by Astro Teller (born…

How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up Finally the SMS arrived: “Tomorrow morning 5am, flight number AZ610 from Rome to NewYork.” An SMS hitting my BlackBerry on Sunday evenings used to decide my destination and client for the coming week. I was working for one of the…

Subscribe to FT.com Subscribe to read: ‘The Lion Wakes: a Modern History of HSBC’, by Richard Roberts and David Kynaston Already a subscriber? Sign in here Newspaper + Premium Digital $11.77 per week * Select All the benefits of a Premium Digital Subscription, plus: Free delivery to your home or…

Sex On Wednesdays She smiled. “Like school… but sex… sex school.” By Jason Smith As I reached my hand between her thighs, she pushed me away the way you would a dog who’s not allowed on the couch. “No today, Jay-zone,” she said, matter-of-factly, looking slightly annoyed. “La prossima settimana……

Pave Talent Tabitha Wood recently posted a question on our Community Forum asking members, What’s the biggest career risk you’ve taken? Looking back, do you feel it was worth taking? Why or why not? Maneesh Goyal, founder of both MKG and Live in the Grey , expanded on his initial response, which is…

Charlie Munger On How To Build a $2 Trillion Startup Imagine it’s January of 1884 in Atlanta, Georgia. Glotz, an affluent fellow citizen, has invited you to participate in a peculiar competition: You and twenty others are invited to present a plan to start a business that will turn a $2 million…

Pipino: Gentleman Thief Magicians, Mafiosos, a Missing Painting, and the Heist of a Lifetime Venice was built to confuse. The floating Italian city has few straight lines: Each cobblestoned footpath veers and twists, the buildings lean, and small bridges vault sideways. For tourists, it’s like…