Longform

Bill Bradley was a Rhodes scholar, a three-term U.S. Senator and a presidential candidate. But before all that, he was the best college basketball player in the country.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s friends didn’t realize what he’d done until they saw his image on television.

Coastal erosion is leading more than a few Britons to watch their homes crumble into the sea.

Kamel Daoud’s celebrated retelling of Albert Camus’s The Stranger came within two votes of winning the Prix Goncourt. It has also made him a target of radical Islamists.

A home for troubled children in California comes undone.

The rise of the Peoples Temple through the lens of an earlier group: Father Divine’s Peace Mission.

He was one of Israel’s greatest spies. Then he brought his own country to the brink of war.

The death of Bobby Phills, an NBA player who made one terrible mistake.

On fishing, physics, and life's intangibles.

<p>“Back when his girls were girls, with fluffy pink rugs on their bathroom floor, Burgundy wasn’t much of a second-guesser. He was a richly confident physicist with work at the university. He golfed. They went to the club. Even when there were questions of the girls smoking or skipping school (and there were always questions, wink-wink), Burgundy hadn’t worried about His Girls. They weren’t that kind of a family. And anyway (so lovely were His Girls) if they would have been that kind of family they would have worn it well. Being well-paid, occupied and cohesively married does wonders for a man’s confidence.”</p>

Old India and new, viewed through the prism of the writer’s hometown.

“None of this should have ever happened. It makes absolutely no sense at all. It’s truly crazy.”

She teaches directors to direct.

A man in Puerto Rico stumbles on a brick of cocaine, and rather than sell it he decides to bury it. Others, hearing his story, cook up a plan to retrieve it.

A profile of Judy Clarke, the publicity-shy anti-death-penalty attorney, who has defended the Unabomber, Susan Smith, and Jared Loughner.

“The regular average layman couldn’t see what I see. And the way they’re painting the trainer is all wrong. Look at him there, screaming, Do this! and Do that! I never had anyone telling me what to do. I did it. Shouting at the fighter like that makes him look like an animal, like a horse to be trained.”

The events that led the writer to spend 60 days in jail.

The drugs did not entirely deliver on their promise of anxiety reduction.

Has global warming made it harder for environmentalists to care about conservation?

On loving Taco Bell, as a half-Mexican. A James Beard Award nominee.

Paleram Chauhan, a 52-year-old Indian farmer, was shot dead during the summer of 2013. The reason: his opposition to a gang of criminals stealing his village’s sand to sell on the black market.

Beatrice Munyenyezi told her New Hampshire neighbors that she was refugee from the Rwandan genocide. Half of that was true.

Ronnie O’Sullivan is the best snooker player in the world. He’s also the most tormented.

The making of an all-time great video game.

Harry Shaughnessy was a suburban dad and a lifelong Catholic. Then he and his family gave up on God.