Feature Stories
Look up Azerbaijan on the map and one can see immediately how this Caucasus country is a confluence of cultures: Persian, Russian, Islamic, seafaring, to name a few. All of these influences contribute to modern-day …
Not long ago, business broker Gary Grine was summoned to a mailbox franchise outlet. The owner had purchased the business as an investment and now wanted to sell. From the glowing terms the man was …
Within the first 10 minutes of my arrival at the Over-The-Line tournament, a fat, hairy, middle-aged man wearing swim trunks and a holster crammed with six Budweiser’s, carrying a camera fitted with a zoom lens …
After meeting Samantha Ginn twice, I’m left with the impression that at the end of a long day, when the rest of us drink beer, snap at our children, or numb our brains on reruns …
Hilary Kearney reminds me of a modern Joni Mitchell. She wears her stick-straight, shoulder-length, blond hair in a side-swept part. When I first met Hilary, she was barefoot and standing in her kitchen. Minutes earlier, …
In 1973, if you’d asked 15-year-old Andrea Rushing if he’d rather meet Salvador Dalí or Michael Jackson, he would have picked Salvador Dalí. “I was probably the only black boy in the South whose hero …
Brian got married “around age 28. We had Anthony about two years afterwards and had Adriana in ’94.” Though he didn’t relish the thought of being “50 years old and worrying about [my daughter’s] virginity,” …
On a Tuesday evening in late September, Lindsay Marks stands in the center of a group of people at Spike Africa’s Fresh Fish Grill and Bar on Broadway. She wears a cheek-stretcher of a smile …
An excerpt from The Sanctuary of Illness: A Memoir of Heart Disease by longtime Reader contributor Thomas Larson.
Part four of a four-part story about apartheid-era South Africa. First published in The Monthly, November 1986. Reprinted in the Reader, summer of 1990. In memory of Nelson Mandela.
1 ) Roman Abramovich yacht on San Diego’s Embarcadero — Two helicopter pads, pool, spa, hot tub... 2 ) San Diego Chargers Philip Rivers on indefinite hiatus following political endorsement — All-Pro quarterback's statement on …
“The man was an informer.” Riggs and I are sharing daytime fun, a black guy and a white guy driving around black townships, at risk both from South African security forces and enraged blacks who, …
Next morning I begin making the rounds, schedule interviews with a well-known activist who’s teaching at University of Witwatersrand (he has since been detained), with Brendon Berry, president of the National University Student Association, recently …
May 8, 1986. I am the only passenger on the 30-minute shuttle from Jans Smuts International Airport to Johannesburg’s city center. Joburg’s population is three million plus and its downtown bears an uncanny resemblance to …
The first person executed by the state of California — José Gabriel — might have been an innocent man.
There was enough evidence to hang Indian Jose Gabriel for the killings of the Geyser family on Otay Mesa in 1892…at least by mob standards.