Gay Talese is one of the best profile writers. He has often said that he prefers to write profiles of famous people after their peak because that's when it's possible to see who they really are.
He also wrote one of my favorite essays on New York, titled "New York is a City of Things Unnoticed"
Not sure why this is here, but it's a great article and perhaps the most famous example of a "write around," a profile where the writer has little to no access to the subject.
Weirdly the summary is completely unreadable unless you select it, because it's sitting on top of the image. I thought at first it just didn't work on Chrome, but it does the same thing on all browsers. After inspecting the html code it looks like they've done that on purpose - the image is 360px wide, but the container is 240px, so the summary text will overlap the image. Did they intend to make it unreadable?
Why are we all drawn to these? It kind of weird, isn't it? I've learned that an audience tends to have about a 10 minute attention span. To snap people out of drifting off, just tell a quick story, and you reset your audience's attention span for another 10 minutes.
What is it about narratives, stories, and parables that intrigue us?
He also wrote one of my favorite essays on New York, titled "New York is a City of Things Unnoticed"