Attending the two-day-long “Crap$ 101″ course, where aspiring craps players learn the Golden Touch system of betting, visualize dice tosses, and pursue the elusive “controlled throw.”

“My dad looked at me and said, ‘I signed off on Bentsen’s son going into the Guard, and I signed off on Bush’s son going into the Guard.’”

The story behind the story that ended Dan Rather’s career.

She survived an evil, gruesome attack. Her partner did not. An account of a victim, a widow, telling her story on the witness stand.

Update, 4/16/12: This piece was just awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

A profile of Colin Duffy: fifth-grader, suburban New Jersey resident, ruler of the backyard, player of video games, boy.

The enduring system of organized crime in Naples.

The mob and Youngstown, Ohio: a love story.

Life and death inside a NATO hospital in Afghanistan.

He is a cheerful old farmer who jokes as he serves rice cakes made by his wife, and then he switches easily to explaining what it is like to cut open a 30-year-old man who is tied naked to a bed and dissect him alive, without anesthetic.

A profile of Candy Barr–porn star pioneer, burlesque legend, and Texas folk hero.

Teaching Emily Dickinson at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida.

After two people are found dead in Yellowstone National Park, a team of investigators tracks down the unlikely culprit: a grizzly bear.

An investigative look at the killing of Trayvon Martin.