Among his cover pieces at Newsweek: "The New Rich of Silicon Valley", "The Most Hated Man in Baseball", profiles of Justices Clarence Thomas and William Brennan, "The Selling of Star Wars", "The birth of Netscape", "The Great Home Run Chase of 1998", "The Return of the Hale-Bopp Comet", and "The Secret Vote That Made George W. Bush President".
His Newsweek cover story in 2006 broke the notorious Hewlett-Packard boardroom spying scandal involving venture capitalist Tom Perkins, which led to Congressional hearings and California state indictments.
For Fortune, Kaplan's profiles included Charlie Rose, David Geffen, Shaquille O'Neal, Howard Schultz (of Starbucks), Ralph Nader, Marc Benioff (of Salesforce.com), David Boies, Dennis Kozlowski in prison, SAS, Haagen-Daz, Shake Shack, Mars Candy, Chipotle, Lou Dobbs, the former Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz, education entrepreneur Sal Khan, and Hostess Twinkies in bankruptcy.
He's worked for a day on the Monopoly assembly line at Hasbro, at an Aeropostale register on Black Friday, and atop an asphalt tank at NuStar Energy.
Kaplan's other books include The Silicon Boys, a national bestseller that has been translated into six languages, and The Accidental President, an account of the Bush-Gore election dispute on which the Emmy-winning 2008 HBO feature film Recount is based.
In 1988, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award, which recognizes excellence by journalists than under 35; Kaplan's piece in the National Law Journal, "Death Row Dilemma," was about the strange case of William Henry Drake, who came within hours of electrocution despite two lawyers knowing he had not in fact killed anybody; the story explored how attorney-client confidentiality can lead to astonishing results.