The Endless Summer poster is 50 years old, and it hasn’t aged a minute. Kitchen-table project turned pop-culture phenomenon, the Day-Glo movie promo created by John Van Hamersveld for his friend Bruce Brown’s 1964 documentary is still selling the dream—on T-shirts, TV shows, beer bottles, and dorm walls. LILI ANOLIK looks back at the moment an iconic image was born, the social upheaval it presaged, and the surfer-dude-slash-designer whose life it changed

As publisher of The Washington Post—and a Watergate legend—the late Katharine Graham drew the highest and mightiest to Mohu, her 218-acre Martha's Vineyard summer estate. In an adaptation from her new memoir, MADELEINE BLAIS, an island neighbor, recalls the delights and dilemmas (how to compete with Princess Diana's hostess gift or match the culinary skills of a private French chef?) of her annual rendezvous with Graham

Swelled by rain, East Hampton's Georgica Pond would swamp many waterfront mansions, flooding cellars and lawns. Then, one July night, someone destroyed the barrier between it and the ocean, draining a 290-acre pond. Hamptonites are still guessing who among them-Martha Stewart? Steven Spielberg?—had means, motive, and opportunity

While much of America worries about foreclosure, John Paulson, who made $3.7 billion shorting subprime mortgages, has plunked down $41.3 million for a Southampton estate. Another just went (to Tiger Woods?) for $60 million. And Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman is building a vast compound in Water Mill. But, amid whispers about which Wall Street casualties will lose their summer spreads, the market for properties below $10 million is grim. MICHAEL SHNAYERSON checks the real-estate temperature of the country’s most celebrated summer retreat to see if its mere mega-millionaires are about to take a cold dip