Longform

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.

When one of the best young chemists in the world took his own life, Harvard was forced to reconsider the relationship between PhD students and their (often Nobel Prize-winning) advisers.

Inside the competitive, lucrative, swashbuckling world of DWI attorneys in Houston.

An interview with Lawrence Schiller, himself one of the great interviewers of his time, whose research fueled Norman Mailer’s Executioner’s Song.

An emerging school of therapy says that scripting your dreams while awake could eliminate the worst ones. Not everyone thinks that’s healthy.

What the great romantic novels of history can tell us about “seduction theory” and the cult of the pickup artist.

Seventeen years after taking the iconic “Afghan Girl” photograph for National Geographic, Steve McCurry went back to find her.

Vignettes of the residents of South Elliot Place.

A day in the life of a Brooklyn laundromat.

Should modern medicine shift its end-of-life priorities, focusing less on staving off death and more on improving a patient’s last days?

Is there really such a thing as brain death?

A Hollywood screenwriter finds out his identity’s been stolen when a hooker calls–from his private office–demanding to be paid for the sex they didn’t just have.

John Friend, who founded a new school of yoga, says the practice should be about both exercise and spirituality. Oh, and making money.

A writer for Conan O’Brien on how The Tonight Show really ended and on how his boss got screwed.

Erich Spangenberg is in the business of owning other people’s ideas. He makes a fortune.

Her suicide made headlines around the world after classmates were indicted on felony charges related to bullying. The real story isn’t that simple.