History

A nurse walking the wards of the Colorado State Hospital in Pueblo in the closing years of the 1970s could have passed three different patients on three different floors, each with his own file, his own doctors, his own locked corridor. And one detail repeated at the top of every intake form: the same surname, … Read more

The summer of 1898 was hot in Pressburg, and the tennis court had seen a long afternoon of play. Archduke Franz Ferdinand had come to the estate of Archduke Friedrich and his wife, Archduchess Isabella von Croÿ, as he had so often before. He played his sets, changed, and left for Vienna. On the bench … Read more

Vincent “Vinnie Ocean” Palermo lived two lives that never should have overlapped. By day he was a suburban family man, the kind of neighbor who kept his lawn trimmed and his voice low. By night he sat at the center of the DeCavalcante crime family, the quiet authority who held New Jersey’s underworld together without … Read more

The torn envelope landed flat on the kitchen table, open side up, empty. The tall man who had done the talking let it fall from his fingers the way a man drops something he believes is already his. Ten thousand dollars, he said. Protection fee. Harlem pays like everywhere else now. The woman across from … Read more

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, a firm that had survived 158 years of wars, panics, and depressions, filed for the largest bankruptcy in American history. Over $600 billion in assets were suddenly frozen, and within days the global financial system came within hours of complete collapse. The story most people tell about this catastrophe … Read more

On a winter morning in February 1670, an eighteen-year-old empress lay in the grip of a labour that had come far too early. In her fear she made a bargain with God. If she survived, she would drive the Jews out of Vienna. Her infant son died that very day. She lived. By the end … Read more

In November 1944, the Gestapo came for Elena Paulus. She was in her home, the quiet spa town of Baden-Baden in southwest Germany, waiting for a message from a husband who had vanished into Soviet captivity nearly two years before. The men who arrested her were not hunting a conspirator. She had joined nothing, signed … Read more

On September 2, 1883, at Luxembourg Palace near Vienna, Archduchess Elizabeth Marie of Austria was born into a position of extraordinary weight. Known within the family as Erzsi, she was the only legitimate grandchild of Emperor Franz Joseph, the sole child of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary and Princess Stephanie of Belgium. In a dynasty … Read more

At nine-fifteen on the morning of May 23rd, 1934, six lawmen crouched in the brush along a rural Louisiana road, close to giving up. They had waited through the entire previous day with no sign of their quarry, and the ambush near Gibsland seemed ready to collapse. Then they heard a car approaching at speed. … Read more