Jacob Riis, writing in 1899, on how a childhood spent in New York City’s tenements led a 15-year-old boy to be convicted of murder.

The Appleseed Project is ostensibly a traveling marksmanship school - but what else is it teaching?

How PCC, once an inmate soccer team and now Brazil’s most notorious prison gang, coordinated seven days of riots throughout São Paulo using mobile phones.

Selections from the leaked documents about the war in Afghanistan portray a military effort that is ineffective and frequently absurd. (Part of the NYT War Logs series.)

The forgotten life of Eva Tanguay, perhaps America’s first rock star.

David Sedaris on smoking and quitting.

How a dental equipment salesman from Germany named Klaus Teuber invented the perfect board game, Settlers of Catan.

Kids are identifying as gay at younger ages, sometimes only 10 or 11. Their communities and parents are scrambling to adapt.

The mother of a child born with a deformed brain responds, heartbreakingly, to an academic study claiming that people are happier without kids.

The backstory of the publication of WikiLeaks’s Afghanistan logs.

Refugees arriving in the U.S. after receiving asylum face challenges that have led some to return to their war-torn homelands.

Frank Rich on The Promise, Jonathan Alter’s book about the first year of the Obama administration.