Vladimir Putin, Russia’s new president, won the admiration of his people for his iron grasp on power. Then came the Kursk submarine crisis. Will the Kremlin’s mystery man be able to rein in a massively corrupt oligarchy, or will he wake the ghost of Stalin?
Gianni Versace appears to have been the crescendo of a cross-country murder spree that landed 27-year-old Andrew Cunanan on the F.B.I.’s Ten Most Wanted list. From the truth about Cunanan’s childhood, to the bloody crime scenes he left behind in Minneapolis, Chicago, New Jersey, and Miami, Maureen Orth follows the twisted psychological path that ended only when Cunanan turned the .40-caliber murder weapon on himself.
Argentineans have always had a fatal weakness for charisma. And in their president from 1989 to 1999, they had the glitziest crowd pleaser since Evita. Maureen Orth reports for Vanity Fair from Buenos Aires about the Arab leader of a Catholic country, and his double political tango with the rich elite and the descamisados.
As leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, Gerry Adams is Northern Ireland’s most controversial politician, a hero to some, a murderer to others. MAUREEN ORTH follows his dangerous, charismatic high-wire act from Belfast to London to Washington as Adams tires to turn his people from terror to peace.
High-fashion muse and model Wallis Franken Montana plunged from the kitchen window of her Rue de Lille apartment in May, leaving the Paris couture world in a state of shock. The author investigates Montana’s tormented relationship with her husband, designer Claude Montana, the abusive “dark angel” who friends and family believe played a part in the American beauty’s death.
Michael Jackson’s interview with ABC News’s PrimeTime Live was a public-relations triumph, in which 60 million viewers got anything but the truth.