On the dangerous glut of visitors looking to conquer Mt. Everest, where there is sometimes a two-hour wait to climb the Hillary Step.

A profile of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister of Turkey.

The odyssey of Kim Jong-il’s personal chef.

On artists using their bodies to blur the line between human and machine.

An interview with T.J. Jackson Lears, historian of the “charlatans and hucksters of the Gilded Age, the cagey, conniving street peddlers of what we’d rather think was a premodern world.”

In a Turkish hotel, veterans of the Libyan Revolution meet with their fractured Syrian counterparts to transfer know-how and heavy weaponry.

A trip to a pepper-eating contest in remote India.

A profile of the writer.

Plus: An excerpt from McCann's new novel, TransAtlantic. (via Longform Fiction)

“Some companies are beginning to allow women to take their management-training courses. A woman sitting in on an executive conference is less of a shock to the male than she was only a few years ago. A few big companies–R.C.A., the Home Life Insurance Co., and the New York Central, for example–have even ushered women into the board room.”

A fishery, an economy, and a way of life hang in the balance.