ARCHIVES

A young lawyer barely out of the closet. A partner’s slur. A $15 million lawsuit. Aaron Charney’s career-destroying search for justice.

Fighting a tenement blaze on a freezing January day now called Black Sunday, two firemen were killed and four were forced to jump out the window in a tragedy everybody thinks could have been prevented. Two years later, the survivors talk for the first time about what happened in that building and why the rage and guilt they feel have only gotten worse.

“I know it meant a lot to him to help people,” says Monica, “to protect his country and do the right thing at home. He knew the risks. He was happy. He had his whole life laid out. He knew what he wanted. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

When it’s done, in 2011, the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower will, of course, be nothing like the tower of our once-lofty architectural dreams. But maybe that matters less than we thought.

He built an $80 million investment business, scammed friends, family, and a 9/11 widow out of a fortune, then walked out of his life.

Many boys nearby.

Lifted out of working-class Brooklyn and propelled to Brearley, Wesleyan, Credit Suisse, and Condé Nast, Tiesha Sargeant was supposed to be a model of progressive social mobility. So how did she wind up back in her old neighborhood with a fatal gunshot wound to the head?

Do the Orthodox Jews have a Catholic-priest problem?

Why New York’s Reading Wars are so contentious.

Hedge-fund guru Joel Greenblatt applied Wall Street principles—and $1,000 per student—to turn around a struggling Queens elementary school. And it worked, spectacularly.