Among an Abundance of Bens, He Was the Best Bet

Ms. Shealy, 35, has a bachelor’s degree in international affairs and fine art from George Washington University and two master’s degrees — one in Arabic and Islamic and Middle Eastern studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and another from the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. She is now a senior producer…

Ellen von Unwerth Is Fashion’s Lion Tamer

Ellen von Unwerth is having a glitter emergency. The acclaimed fashion photographer is hours from opening her new exhibit—“This Side of Paradise,” a retrospective at SCAD FASH in Atlanta—and her custom black metallic paneling is nowhere to be found. “Apparently it got lost in Korea,” shrugs Unwerth, who favors slim black suits that make her…

How to Grill Chicken

In her book “Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal,” Mary Roach explores how we taste and explains how we can perceive five main flavors, but infinite smells. “Eighty to 90 percent of the sensory experience of eating is olfaction,” she writes. That’s why grilled chicken legs taste especially good in summer, when their smokiness mingles…

Choose Your Own Cookout Salad Adventure

I am not what you’d call a go-with-the-flow woman. I like structure, I like itineraries, I like contingency plans. That may be why, for a presumably straightforward question like, “What should I bring to the cookout this weekend?” I can think of no other way to respond than with a detailed, multi-answer flow chart. (“Finally,…