MARILYN JOHNSON

The cult and culture of obituaries, by a former obituarist

Are librarians obsolete in the age of Google? They couldn't be more important.

Salvaging the past is a tough way to live, but archaeologists wouldn't have it any other way.

Why were people shattered by the death of Princess Diana?

Katharine Hepburn's most important act of defiance

After an early life controlled by her mother and her studio, no one told Elizabeth Taylor how to live.

Marlon Brando was talented and careless-- and pain followed him wherever he hid.

Life magazine essay on a brother's death

Op-ed for The Los Angeles Times

Excavations at Jamestown reveal the brutal suffering of its earliest leaders.

THE DAY THE FAIRYTALE DIED
A tribute to Princess Diana

published in LIFE

and reprinted in The Daily Beast

(introduction by Alex Belth)