The Air Mail Archive: Every weekly issue

Issue No. 199

May 6, 2023

Career Suicide

From Idaho, Howard Blum probes deep into the mind of alleged student murderer Bryan Kohberger, a smart criminal-justice scholar caught by the very methods he studied

Religious Sexts

From Germany, Laura Moser unravels the sordid web of pornographic messages, sexual harassment, and academic fraud surrounding one of the country’s most powerful rabbis

The People’s Paparazzo

From the U.K., Henri Cartier-Bresson’s street photographs hearken back to the time England crowned its last king

Issue No. 198

April 29, 2023

WAILING TOWN

From Nantucket, Clara Molot reports on the housing crisis that has seen tiny fishermen’s cabins selling for millions of dollars on the tony island, and the murky forces at play behind the scenes

FRENEMY OF THE STATE

From Buckingham Palace, Lois Rogers reveals how Wallis Simpson coldly betrayed her childhood best friend in her insatiable quest to become Queen of England

ABOVE THE GLASS CEILING

From the first-class lounge, Rich Cohen charts the unashamedly sexist history of the Executive, the men-only flight that offered free cigars and unlimited cocktails in the Mad Men era

Issue No. 197

April 22, 2023

New Dogs, Old Tricks

From the editor’s chair, Graydon Carter charts how high-end thievery and unaccountability in the U.S.—from Clarence Thomas’s holidays to Jared Kushner’s Saudi kickbacks, to Trump’s staggering frauds—are starting to resemble Russia’s after the fall of the Soviet Union

Trumpsclusive!

From Mar-a-Lago, we present MAGAzine! The hugely anticipated second volume of the Official Lifestyle Publication of Your Once and Future Favorite President features Marjorie Taylor Greene’s fashion tips, a sneak peek at Trump’s Memorial Service, and much more!

The Trial That Never Was

From Delaware, Mark Bowden reports on the shocking last-minute settlement that ended the Dominion vs. Fox trial before it even began

Issue No. 196

April 15, 2023

The Chicago Way

From the newsroom, Alessandra Stanley suggests that the only way to deal with the Russian arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is to hit Putin back Untouchables-style

Courting Disaster

From Westchester, William D. Cohan uncovers how an upmarket country club’s squash program has been a hotbed of steamy affairs and sexual harassment

Leaving in Style

From the Upper East Side, Sam Kashner goes behind the scenes at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel, which has ushered everyone who’s anyone—including Succession’s Logan Roy—into the hereafter

Issue No. 195

April 8, 2023

THE SPY WHO LOATHES ME

From Israel, Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv report on how even super-secretive Mossad agents are openly protesting Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the nation’s judiciary

Blood in Brussels

From Belgium, Joseph Bullmore unravels the violent murder of a billionaire baroness by her own stepson, a counter-espionage spy

Daylight Grubbery

From New York, Alan Richman chews over the sky-high prices in the city’s restaurants

Issue No. 194

April 1, 2023

Construction Zone

From New York, Charles Bagli laments the roughly 380 miles of scaffolding currently in place throughout the city

Après Moi, Le Déluge

From Paris, Alessandra Stanley looks past the marches, the strikes, and the uncollected trash at the man behind it all

A New Hope

From Syracuse, Howard Blum reflects on the exoneration of Anthony Broadwater, who spent 16 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit

Issue No. 193

March 25, 2023

Black Market in Red Square

From Moscow, Andrew Ryvkin discovers the hustles and work-arounds that Russians are using to get their hands on Western luxury goods—and enrich Putin at the same time

America’s Nightmare

From New York City, James Wolcott marvels at Rudy Giuliani’s ability to relinquish all shame, honor, and self-respect, and how he managed to disgust even Trump

The Royal Me

From Buckingham Palace, Stuart Heritage considers the multitude of ways Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have forgotten their manners

Issue No. 192

March 18, 2023

Inside Man

From New York, a top art dealer turned fraudster divulges the deceptions and cons of the big-time art world as well as how he taught the Situation to play Scrabble behind bars

Own Goal

From the U.K., Stuart Heritage recounts the disastrous battle the BBC has been waging—and spectacularly losing—against national treasure and former soccer player Gary Lineker

Reich Here, Reich Now

From Germany, Antonia Woloshyn exposes the neo-Nazis who have been murdering immigrants, robbing banks, and making bombs, all while the police look the other way

Issue No. 191

March 11, 2023

Mother’s Ruin

From rehab, Lyndall Hobbs speaks of her heartbreaking quest to save her daughter from the ravages of fentanyl addiction

Tears for Sears

From Wall Street, William D. Cohan recounts the precipitous fall of a great American institution—and how the financial somersaults concocted by the hedge-fund manager Eddie Lampert only hastened its demise

Model Murder

From Hong Kong, Eric Wilson reports on the gruesome killing of the model, influencer, and socialite Abby Choi, whose body was dismembered—and worse

Issue No. 190

March 4, 2023

All the World’s a Stage

From Hollywood, Edward Zwick tells of the outrageous backroom maneuverings that got Shakespeare in Love to the screen, including the sexcapades of Daniel Day-Lewis and Julia Roberts

Crazy Like A Fox

From the newsroom, Brian Stelter reveals how Fox News host Maria Bartiromo went from being a respected business journalist to a full-blown election conspiracist. Was she after higher ratings, or did she actually believe it?

Philophilia Returns

From London, Vassi Chamberlain seeks out the enigmatic Phoebe Philo, the fashion darling and former creative director of Celine, as she returns to the spotlight

Issue No. 189

February 25, 2023

Slippery Suspect

From Paris, Malika Browne recalls her meeting with Charles Sobhraj, the serial killer known as “the Serpent,” who has just returned home after nearly 20 years in a Nepalese jail

War Child

From Denmark, Sveta V., a teenage refugee from Mariupol, tells her terrifying story of escape on the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion

High Lines

From New York City, Elena Clavarino maps out the Big Apple’s drug scene by neighborhood. Where do you get yours?

Issue No. 188

February 18, 2023

Blood Lust

From Moscow, Idaho, Nancy Jo Sales reveals how the behavior of Bryan Kohberger, the alleged murderer of four university students, is straight out of the incel playbook

Proceed with Caution!

From Mar-a-Lago, AIR MAIL unearths MAGAzine, the latest Trump venture

First in Class

From Arkansas, Legs McNeil presents an oral history of the Little Rock Nine, the first Black students to integrate an intensely racist, whites-only high school

Issue No. 187

February 11, 2023

Cyber-Stalking

From Moscow, Idaho, Howard Blum goes inside the grassroots social-media efforts that filled in the gaps of the police investigation into the murders of four university students

Trickling Down

From New York, Charles Leerhsen details the unraveling of Jeffrey Sachs, once “the most important economist in the world,” now a peddler of pro-Russian propaganda and coronavirus conspiracies

Sweating the Details

From London, Stuart Heritage goggles at the new movie based on Prince Andrew’s disastrous BBC interview—He can’t sweat! He was never there!—that stars a slumming Gillian Anderson and Rufus Sewell

Issue No. 186

February 4, 2023

Armie of One

In his first interview since accusations of violence, rape, and cannibalism destroyed his acting career, Armie Hammer speaks out

French Exit

From the Élysée Palace, Alexandra Marshall charts the public disappearance of First Lady Brigitte Macron, who once fascinated the French but, thanks to a media misstep, appears to have lost her luster

Art Fief

From Hong Kong, Alexandra Bregman pulls back the veil on Rosalie Wong, the mysterious art dealer, and paramour, to China’s billionaire elite

Issue No. 185

January 28, 2023

Chasing the Devil

From Idaho, Howard Blum delves into the bleak mind of Bryan Kohberger, the alleged murderer of four University of Idaho students, and reveals exactly how the F.B.I. hunted him down

Rogue’s Return

From the House of Commons, Stuart Heritage stacks up Boris Johnson’s latest financial scandals and his attempts to burnish his image by visiting Ukraine—at taxpayers’ expense

FOMO, Jet-Set Style

From the private jet, Elena Clavarino charts the absurd lengths—and outrageous expense—to which the young and privileged will go to for a party

Issue No. 184

January 21, 2023

Sight Unseen

From Berlin, Joseph Bullmore reports on the fall from grace of Johann König, the celebrated “blind gallerist,” who fell foul of #MeToo allegations but might be the victim of a bizarre plot

Witness for the Prosecution

From the writing desk, filmmaker Errol Morris dives between the lines of journalist Janet Malcolm, who wrestled with the slipperiness of truth and her own motivations

The Game of Hockney

From London, William Boyd sits down with David Hockney, who is equally busy puffing cigarettes and setting up a sprawling immersive exhibition

Issue No. 183

January 14, 2023

Body Count

From Connecticut, Rich Cohen recounts the story of Richard Dabate, who murdered his wife but was tripped up by her fitness tracker

Bohemian Strife

From the artist’s studio, Ivana Lowell recalls the tempestuous marriage that her mother, Lady Caroline Blackwood, had with the then struggling—but occasionally monstrous—Lucian Freud

Fire Sail

From the high seas, Mark Ellwood plumbs the depths of the used-luxury-yacht market, and finds bargains are on offer—if you’re willing to overlook the previous owners

Issue No. 182

January 7, 2023

In Cold, Cold Blood

From Idaho, Howard Blum details the gruesome murder of four students in a bucolic college town, and reveals the police’s grassroots approach to finding a suspect

Spare Parts

Fisticuffs with Will! Psychic chats with Diana! A frostbitten penis! From the U.K., Stuart Heritage picks his way through the revelations from Prince Harry’s grievance-fest of a memoir

Geek Freak-Out

From Silicon Valley, Adam Lashinsky tells of bad vibes among the tech bros as free lunches—and toilet paper!—disappear and kombucha taps run dry

Issue No. 181

December 31, 2022

Nuclear Winter

From the bunker, Rebecca John explores the safeguards that are in place to prevent a president—especially one with short fingers—from pushing the big red button

Facing the Music

From the living room, Tim Page explains why you should be ringing in the New Year with Bach

Your Loss is Their Gain

From Turkey, Max Berlinger reports on a new trend among balding men—traveling to Istanbul for hair transplants—and the cottage industry taking root there

Issue No. 180

December 24, 2022

Rock of Ages

From Ukraine, Bernard-Henri Lévy tells of “Slava,” the rock star who sings to the troops in the trenches and embodies the fierce determination of the whole country

Not Your Average Nose Job

Linda Wells, AIR MAIL’s beauty-and-wellness columnist, takes a whiff of the custom fragrances being designed for the super-rich that can easily top $100,000

Home Alone

From New York, James Wolcott celebrates the melancholy beauty of spending Christmas by oneself in the city

Issue No. 179

December 17, 2022

It’s Their Party …

… and they’ll splurge if they want to. From millennial land, Lynn Q. Yu reports on how the extravagant 30th-birthday blowout is the new wedding

Liberté, Égalité … Électricité?

From France, Alexandra Marshall explains how the French are freaking out at the prospect of blackouts—but at least the chairlifts at the ski resorts are running

Colleagues Actually

From London, Tobias Grey interviews the Nobel Prize–winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro about his hotly anticipated foray into screenwriting and working with Bill Nighy

Issue No. 178

December 10, 2022

Holiday Gratings

From the hearth, Larry David delivers a typically improper end-of-year letter, complete with drunken children, unlicensed midwifery, dementia party games, and spousal bondage

Too Much, Too Often

From the editors of this fine journal, our first weekly Attention-Whore Index of people you’re sick of, but who can’t get enough of you!

Barrels of Vintage Whine

From their epic grievance tour, Harry and Meghan go full Putin on his family and their staff

Issue No. 177

December 3, 2022

Model Behavior

From the catwalk, Michael Gross tells how Kate Moss went from bad-girl supermodel to the head of her own talent agency, with a roll call of superstar spawn that includes Keith Richards’s granddaughter

Parental Misguidance

From the courtroom, David Kaufman reports on the claims that former N.B.A. star Dwyane Wade is pressuring his trans daughter to undergo gender-affirming surgery to increase her corporate endorsements

Eating Their Words

From New York, a restaurant maître d’ serves up the tricks he used to sweeten the city’s toughest critics

Issue No. 176

November 26, 2022

Abandoned State

From Moscow, Katya V. speaks of the souring Russian mood, the flood of compatriots crossing the border, abandoned apartments, and the endless farewell parties

Serving the Mob

From New York City, Michael Cecchi-Azzolina, the former maître d’ of the River Café, reveals how to prevent getting whacked after accidentally disrespecting one of John Gotti’s hit men

Fake Smiles

From Beverly Hills, Michele McPhee details a widespread fraud scheme involving top N.B.A. players, dodgy dentists, and dozens of phony root canals

Issue No. 175

November 19, 2022

Special Issue

INTRODUCING AIR MAIL’S FIRST-EVER SPECIAL ISSUE …

The Downtown Set

THE DOWNTOWN SET: OUR LIST OF THE 50 YOUNG NEW YORKERS SHAPING THE SCENE

Yoko Before John

LEGS MCNEIL’S INSIDE LOOK AT YOKO ONO’S EARLY YEARS

Issue No. 174

November 12, 2022

Field of Schemes

From the sidelines, Stuart Heritage reports on bribes, spies, David Beckham, and foul play in the calamitous buildup to this year’s World Cup, in Qatar

Easy Riders

From Hollywood, Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson reveal how Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, and a cheap biker movie changed the film industry forever

Inspector Gadget

From the AIR MAIL test lab, a milk frother that spits out the perfect hot cocoa, and more from our tech-and-gear expert, Jonathan Margolis

Issue No. 173

November 5, 2022

Breaking the Sound Barrier

From Hollywood, Sam Wasson and Jeanine Basinger look at how a then new technology—sound!—disrupted the status quo and created the studio system

Her Back Pages

From the U.K., Stuart Heritage reports on a disastrously timed—yet altogether revealing—new history on the blink-and-you-missed-it prime ministership of Liz Truss

Weight Watchers

Linda Wells, Air Mail’s beauty-and-wellness columnist, reports on the latest craze in weight management—tough-love coaches who draw up fitness game plans for wealthy clients