Longform

Will LaFever never felt right in the world. So he took to the Utah desert, barely making it out alive.

Covering an election in Peru’s largest prison.

On the segregation of Slovakia’s Gypsies.

“Five years, four judges, six lawyers, $400,000 in attorney and expert fees and costs, a child yanked back and forth, [and] petty arguing.” Chronicling the slow end of one American marriage.

“Ebert: Sometimes we do really dislike each other.

Siskel: And sometimes we don’t.”

An oral history of the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot.

The crumbling of an American icon.

A profile of the D.O.C., the rapper’s rapper, who ghostwrote for Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

A mother struggles to cope when a child is born with albinism.

On the business of selling books.

A cultural history of Bitcoin and what happened when the nascent virtual currency began to be covered by the mainstream media.

A trip to the French island of Réunion to report on a bloody battle between surfers and sharks.

On the American teenager who was kidnapped by Islamic militants while on vacation in the Philippines.

A war travelogue through Mali alongside French troops as a “place just like Afghanistan” descends into chaos.

“I never attacked anyone weak. Only bullies, secure in their courts, bureacracies, fifedoms.”

“At the gym, he’s not Garrett Holeve, the guy with Down syndrome. He’s G-Money, an up-and-coming fighter with big ambitions.”

The past, present, and increasingly optimistic future of Vice.

The King of Rwanda is 76 years old, 7 feet 2 inches tall, and lives on public assistance in a small apartment in Virginia.

On Aint It Cool News’ Harry Knowles, who built an influential empire on insider movie news while wheelchair-bound and at one point weighing over 500 pounds, then lost it all.

On California’s three strikes laws.

The history and meaning of taxidermy in American museums.

How a Mossad agent’s desperate bid to jumpstart his career led to the exposure of two top Hezbollah plants.