Karl Taro Greenfeld
New York
Contributing editor Karl Taro Greenfeld has interviewed at least six heads of state; none intimidated him as much as Lazard chairman and C.E.O. Bruce Wasserstein. "His technique is to sort of push you back on your heels as a reporter," Greenfeld says. "He's not above saying, 'That's a stupid question.' " Greenfeld was struck by Wasserstein's dogged resilience: "He's a guy who has stayed vital in his industry despite being written off."

Joe Keohane
Carpinteria, California
At the California headquarters of CKE Restaurants, parent of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., Boston magazine staff writer Joe Keohane couldn't help but sample the company's unabashedly fattening fare. "I must have eaten four pounds of food while I was there," Keohane says. On the menu: a hamburger topped with onion rings and barbecue sauce, a shake with Cap'n Crunch cereal, and the pièce de résistance—a burrito filled with sausage, cheese, gravy, hash browns, and two eggs.

James Rosen
Washington
James Rosen, a Washington correspondent for Fox News, says that one of the most enjoy­able aspects of researching his forth­coming book The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate was reporting on Robert Vesco, who fled the U.S. in 1973 to avoid investigations into his alleged looting of more than $200 million from a mutual fund and his gift of $200,000 to Richard Nixon's 1972 campaign. "The very name Vesco was synonymous with Watergate and all that entailed," Rosen says.

Sue Tallon
San Francisco
In shooting this month's cover at the food lab of calorie-friendly chains Hardee's and Carl's Jr., photographer Sue­ ­Tallon found herself ­doing something unusual: trying, over the course of two days, to build the perfect burger. "It was almost like working at Carl's Jr.: literally putting a layer of mayonnaise and then adding a piece of meat," she says. A Bay Area resident for the past decade, ­Tallon was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and raised in Montreal and Bogotá, Colombia.

Peter Waldman
Baker, Nevada
When senior writer Peter Waldman visited Lake Mead last summer, he was startled to discover that it had receded dramatically since his last trip there, a decade earlier. That sight sparked his investigation into Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's plan to pipe water into Las Vegas from the Great Basin. Along the way, Waldman had lively exchanges with local ranchers, a group not known for environmental activism. "On the question of Washington's imposing its will on the land they love," he says, "they've been passionate preservationists."