Longform

A last-minute trip to Sri Lanka.

“In essence, Pez ordered his economic assassination,” said a fellow Pez dealer.

On corresponding with the Oklahoma City bomber.

Typee, the most popular book Melville published in his lifetime, was his memoir of Polynesia. Most of it was probably made up.

Can the insights of neuroscience help us get over our prejudices?

Researchers do look into near-death experiences, seeking a verified case of what they call “apparently non-physical veridical perception.”

Billionaire Marcelo Claure wants to help David Beckham bring professional soccer to South Florida. He just doesn't want to talk about it.

While accused killer Robert Durst was in Galveston, he made a few friends besides Morris Black.

Family problems and a myriad of solutions.

"I don’t know if my husband and I are on the way to church or a hangover. It is too early in the drive to tell. The first Thursday of every month, my husband’s sister comes over to watch the kids. They are too old for a sitter, but the older one keeps trying to kill herself and we don’t want to risk it. Always keep an eye on them, I tell my sister-in-law. Don’t leave them alone for a second, not even to ice a cake, organize a closet, dry the dishes, say a prayer."

A woman thought a Coen brothers movie was a “true story” and tracked it to her death. Now someone’s made a fictional film about her, further blurring the lines between reality and artifice.

The long arm of the DEA reaches into Liberia to bust a cocaine trafficker.

Many people hoped that this would be the second book she’d publish.

Squeamish though they might be about God, even the totally irreligious can find some comfort in praying.

A brief history of pretending to be sick.

In the deep ocean, a swimming sea-worm called a “green bomber” can throw sacs of light when attacked.

An essay on a fatal car crash in the author’s youth.

Even ISIS’s opponents are hard men who understand terror.

Being friends with Susan Sontag was thrilling, but also “shot through in the end with mutual irritation.”

What’s behind the cyclical fashionability of the monstrously ugly Birkenstock?

The lingering psychological effects of being one of the greatest crime reporters of all time.

Detroit is trying to end the longstanding practice of “scrapping,” which is the only way some of its residents can earn a living.

Santería or Vodou are explored as possibilities.

She’s 80 now, working 13 hour days, and still won’t take so much as a reporter’s hand to cross the stream.

Even an “obstructionist bloc” can’t resist handing prosecutors the indictments they want.