Esquire Summer 2022

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ELLIOT PAGE SHOWED UP AT THE ESQUIRE OFFICES THE WAY MOST famous people would on a Thursday afternoon in New York: discreetly. Black T-shirt. Jeans. Baseball cap pulled low. As he passed my office, I looked up from my Zoom meeting and said to the person on the screen, “I think Elliot Page just walked by.” This wasn’t a random pop-in. He was here for a fitting. The following day, we would be photographing Page for the 1,064th cover of Esquire, so he spent the next hour with stylist Bill Mullen and Esquire’s fashion department, trying on some very expensive clothes. The fitting marked the penultimate step in the lengthy process of executing an Esquire cover shoot. The process begins in earnest with a question: Who should be on the cover? In…

MY DAD HAD ONE OF THOSE BIG CHAIRS. Oxblood leatherette, brass-tack trim, an ottoman for the feet and a wingback for the head. A piece a decorator would call masculine. A chair for reading three paragraphs of a book and then immediately napping. A Dad Chair. It was the one thing I wanted from Mom and Dad’s place in St. Louis when we cleared it out last Christmas. I found a guy who was moving cross-country and paid him $400 to drive it from St. Louis to L. A. Dad was part of the Silent Generation, born be-tween the world wars. He was a Marine, a devout Catholic, a man who wore a necktie to a serious office full of serious chairs. He got himself a proper office job in the…

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK—IT’S A stunner. But let’s be honest: It’s the Times Square of national parks. Last year, more than 4 million people visited the park. If communing with German tourists—lots of them—is what you seek, then go to Yellowstone this summer. (That’s assuming you can even score a campsite; last year they sold out months in advance.) If you prefer to commune with nature, then have we got the place for you: one of the least visited national parks in America, an island that saw just 25,000 visitors in 2021, a locale so remote you’re guaranteed to never see a German tour bus. This place is called Isle Royale. The 50-mile-long island sits on the northern rim of Lake Superior. There is no WiFi, and cell service is spotty. Cars aren’t…

THE GOTTI WARS, by John Gleeson In this electrifying memoir, a prosecutor tells the story of how he brought John Gotti to justice, which took down five major mob families and put him in the crosshairs of organized crime. May 3 CULT CLASSIC, by Sloane Crosley Crosley brings her gifts as a humorist to this crackling novel about a start-up hawking romantic closure. When one woman signs up to reconnect with her former flames, she learns bittersweet truths about love in the age of the smartphone. June 7 TRACY FLICK CAN’T WIN, by Tom Perrotta The heroine of Election (played in the film by Reese Witherspoon) is back as a middle-aged assistant principal angling for the top job. Tracy’s second act delivers acerbic insight about frustrated ambition. June 7 HOW TO RAISE AN ANTIRACIST, by Ibram…

ASK A TODDLER TO DRAW A FAST CAR AND CHANCES ARE THEY’LL INSTINCTIVELY DRAW the silhouette of the Nissan Z. But will they know what a sports car is by the time they get their driver’s permit? Will they ever experience the dumb fun of ripping doughnuts in a strip-mall parking lot? Or just driving aimlessly on a Sunday? These joys are rapidly being left in the dust with the advent of electric cars, which can be quick and efficient but, for the most part, lack the drama and open-road emotion of the increasingly rare affordable two-seat sports car. There is the Miata, the Toyota 86, and, for more than 50 years, the Nissan Z. Since 1970, 1.8 million Z’s have been sold worldwide. Before the dominance of the crossover SUV,…