Business is about power. And guts. And passion. Business coverage should be too.

Welcome to the first issue of Condé Nast Portfolio, a monthly magazine that chronicles how business shapes the world—and who the players are that wield the power. You don’t have to wear a suit or sit behind a desk to love the intrigue or be fascinated by the winners and losers. We see the business angle in every story, from politics to art, technology to entertainment.

Business has captivated me since I was a kid. My dad saw business, like life, as a grand adventure. He regaled me with tales from the executive trenches and introduced me to his favorite newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. I went on to spend 22 years at the Journal as a reporter and editor, propelled by the same curiosity and passion.

Now we’re in a new era. Today’s 24/7 news cycle bombards us with information but gives us less time to process it. That’s where Condé Nast Portfolio comes in. We’ve assembled a remarkable pool of writers to bring you richly reported narratives and investigations. We’ve joined them with the best magazine designers and photographers in the business—led by our award-winning design director, Robert Priest—to tell those stories in a vibrant, visual way. We’ve developed the magazine together with our continuously updated website, Portfolio.com, to offer you the freshest news and analysis anytime, in the format that suits you best. The result, we hope, will surprise, delight, inform—and provoke too.

In this issue, we peel back the layers of secrecy surrounding the two most powerful and least understood industries of our day: private equity firms and hedge funds. Sheelah Kolhatkar gets inside the empire of one of the youngest and most elusive of the hedge fund giants, Ken Griffin of the Chicago-based Citadel Investment Group. Gabriel Sherman, meanwhile, sheds light on mysterious Florida investor Bruce Sherman, who has roiled the newspaper industry with his attacks on Knight Ridder and the New York Times Co.

You’ll find insights into well-known industry titans such as Bill Ford and T. Boone Pickens. On the other side of the globe, Daniel Roth investigates how the ruler of Dubai has virtually cornered the high-end racehorse market. And to put it all in perspective, Tom Wolfe weighs in with his own commentary on the new-money culture, 20 years after The Bonfire of the Vanities.

The same executives who rule the world of finance also own sports teams, build museum wings, fund concert halls. So every month in our Culture Inc. section, we’ll look at the intersection between business and the culture at large. This month, we see Time Warner C.E.O. Dick Parsons with his labor of love, the Apollo Theater. We take a look at the Microsoft millionaires who have revived the Seattle Symphony, and at financier Laurence Fink, C.E.O. of money-management behemoth BlackRock, who in his spare time helped launch the pop band Maroon 5.

We chose a monthly frequency for Condé Nast Portfolio so we can offer you deep dives into important subjects, providing you with the most compelling—and most useful—information. After this issue, we take a break and begin publishing monthly with our September issue.

Meanwhile, our website, Portfolio.com, offers a live read on everything from entertainment to travel to the markets. Watch for blogs by some of our top writers, including Washington editor Matthew Cooper. You’ll find breaking news, thoughtful analysis—and humor too, because business doesn’t have to be boring. Enjoy, and let us know what you’re thinking—you can email me at jlipman@portfolio.com.

As this issue was going to press, my father, who inspired my love for business, passed away unexpectedly. His loss leaves a great personal void for me and my family. Yet while I mourn his death, the adventure he relished lives on. I hope you, too, will find it in these pages.