Colossal corruption. Political chaos. The worst recession in its history. How a once-booming nation fell.

How a sexual assault case in Idaho involving refugee children morphed into an anti-refugee frenzy.

The story behind Tony Kushner’s examination of AIDS and homosexuality.

Trump’s key adviser is a lobbyist known for reinventing tyrants.

What it’s like to write about a candidate who hates you.

The unexpected history of a name.

How a detachment of U.S. Army soldiers smoked out the original Ku Klux Klan.

Melissa Cook is carrying triplets for a man she has never met, conceived with an egg that isn't hers. He only wants two of them, but won't let her keep the third. So she is suing, in the hopes that the court will arrive at a new meaning of parenthood.

“There are critics who see their job as to be on the side of the artist, or in a state of imaginative sympathy or alliance with the artist. I think it's important for a critic to be populist in the sense that we’re on the side of the public. I think one of the reasons is, frankly, capitalism. Whether you’re talking about restaurants or you’re talking about movies, you’re talking about large-scale commercial enterprises that are trying to sell themselves and market themselves and publicize themselves. A critic is, in a way, offering consumer advice.”

The humans behind the algorithm.

On the false narratives of anorexia.

What it was like to be a rank-and-file Sony employee after the hack.

He created the template for contemporary hit-making, made Ace of Base the biggest group in the world, and mentored the most successful songwriter since the Beatles. Why have you never heard of Denniz Pop? Excerpted from The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory.

We think of the character as lithe and slim as the actors who’ve played him. But Shakespeare might not have intended him to be that way.

The tale of the first conviction overturned on faulty arson science.

To reduce recidivism, a program brings criminals face to face with their victims. The results aren’t always what you’d expect.

A trip to the writers’ room of The Onion spinoff, which started as a BuzzFeed parody but has morphed into something else: “the institutional voice of the Internet.”

The 1826 kidnapping – and murder – that begat America’s obsession with Masons.

An essay on its history and future during a time when “gayness, we are told, is over.”

Two brothers divided by Central African Republic’s civil war.

President Lincoln worked very hard all his life. After he died, his corpse kept a gruelling travel schedule, too.

Merriam-Webster is revising its most authoritative tome for the digital age. But in an era of twerking and trolling, what should a dictionary look like?

How the new store is—and isn’t—changing Detroit.

The story of an American myth.

On former CIA agent John T. Downey, who spent more than 20 years in China as the longest held American captive of war.