As William Ellerly Channing tells it, "One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography." The statement is never truer than when reading an exceptional magazine profile. The format is a journalistic staple, and over the years has shaped some of the finest non-fiction published.

The most famous example is a piece by Gay Talese on singer Frank Sinatra. "He was the victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to Sinatra it can plunge him into a state of anguish, deep depression, panic, even rage," Talese wrote. "Frank Sinatra had a cold."

A more recent classic is David Foster Wallace's exceptional profile of Roger Federer, billed as the story of "how one player's grace, speed, power, precision, kinesthetic virtuosity, and seriously wicked topspin are transfiguring men's tennis."

In 2002, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, Mark Bowden asked, "What does Saddam Hussein see in himself that no one else in the world seems to see?"

Evan Wright won a place in this pantheon of greats with a profile of an unhinged Hollywood agent turned Iraq War enthusiast. "In 2004, having made his name as Steven Soderbergh’s agent, Pat Dollard was the stereotypical Hollywood operator: coked-up, Armani-sheathed, separated from his fourth wife, and rapidly self-destructing," he wrote. "But when he hit bottom, Dollard didn’t go back to rehab; he went to Iraq, embedded with the Marines, and filmed a pro-war documentary, which has the industry buzzing and right-wingers hailing him as the anti–Michael Moore."

Gene Weingarten has won two Pulitzer prizes. But the best feature he ever wrote is "The Peekaboo Paradox," a profile of the children's entertainer The Great Zuchinni.

Tom Junod memorably profiled another children's entertainer, summing it up by saying that "Fred Rogers has been doing the same small good thing for a very long time."

In a sprawling series of stories in The Washington Post, Robert G. Kaiser used the story of Joseph Cassidy to explain the lobbying industry better than anyone ever has. And there are several more features as worthwhile in the collection presented below.