When Barack Obama met Genevieve Cook in 1983 at a Christmas party in New York’s East Village, it was the start of his most serious romance yet. But as the 22-year-old Columbia grad began to shape his future, he was also struggling with his identity: American or international? Black or white? Drawing on conversations with both Cook and the president, David Maraniss has the untold story of the couple’s time together.

The op-ed heard round the world—Greg Smith’s scathing New York Times attack on Goldman Sachs, his employer of nearly 12 years—dealt another blow to the firm’s reeling reputation. Now the questions are louder than ever: Will C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein have to go? Who might succeed him? And does it matter?

While the glory of her voice propelled Whitney Houston into the pop stratosphere, her demons kept dragging her down, a powerful undertow of drugs and toxic relationships. Following her death in a Beverly Hilton bathtub, Mark Seal investigates Houston’s final days: the prayers and the parties, the Hollywood con artist on the scene, and the message she left behind.

When London threw its name into the hat for the 2012 Olympics, many had doubts. Not former sport minister Tessa Jowell. Interviewing Tony Blair, Ken Livingstone, and others Jowell recruited to her cause, Michael Joseph Gross details the grueling, often farcical campaign that won the city its prize—plus a $14.5 billion tab.

Along one stretch of New York asphalt—44th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues—the author excavates a vanishing civilization, peeling back decades of his own past as well. Thirty years on, the barber in the old New Yorker building is still there. The blueblood haunts are trapped in amber. The ghosts of Frank Crowninshield, William Shawn, Dorothy Parker, and Harry Houdini linger. From the Algonquin to the Harvard Club, to the ever morphing Royalton, Alex Shoumatoff savors the madeleines of the life he left behind.

When the Internet was created, decades ago, one thing was inevitable: the war today over how (or whether) to control it, and who should have that power. Battle lines have been drawn between repressive regimes and Western democracies, corporations and customers, hackers and law enforcement. Looking toward a year-end negotiation in Dubai, where 193 nations will gather to revise a U.N. treaty concerning the Internet, Michael Joseph Gross lays out the stakes in a conflict that could split the virtual world as we know it.

When the Costa Concordia, a floating pleasure palace carrying 4,200 people, hit a rock off the Italian coast on January 13, it became the largest passenger ship ever wrecked, supplanting the Titanic in maritime history. Bryan Burrough reconstructs an epic fight for survival—in which all too many would perish.

After writing two of the most interesting movies of the past several years (The Social Network and Moneyball), Aaron Sorkin has returned to television via HBO, which is premiering his dramatic series The Newsroom next month. James Kaplan hears about the intellectual and emotional underpinnings of Sorkin’s fictional world, from his love of screwball to his passion for argument.

When it comes to inventive comedy (Modern Family, 30 Rock), complex heroines (Damages, Weeds), and finely textured drama (Mad Men, Downton Abbey), the action has left the cineplex and headed for broadcast and cable. James Wolcott explores the evolutionary advantage behind television’s takeover of popular culture.

Despite The Washington Post’s history of swashbuckling journalism, its business strategy has been deeply conservative. Can the heirs to Kay Graham and Ben Bradlee’s legacy—Graham’s son Don, the chairman and C.E.O.; her granddaughter Katharine Weymouth, the publisher; and executive editor Marcus Brauchli—save the Post from a lack of vision? Sarah Ellison follows the money, the management battles, and the missed opportunities at a great American newspaper.