How precious maps, books, and art vanished from the Pittsburgh archive over the course of 25 years.

In 1936, Karp Lykov whisked his family into the Siberian wilderness to escape Bolshevik persecution. They remained there, alone, until discovered by a helicopter crew in 1978.

The true story of the first Thanksgiving.

Why did we turn an isolated teenage girl into the world’s most famous Holocaust victim?

At the height of the Cold War, America’s most secretive counterespionage effort set out to crack unbreakable ciphers.

Thirty years ago, a series of documentaries introduced the world to an isolated tribe in Papua New Guinea. What happened when the cameras left?

Ida Wood, who lived for decades as a recluse in a New York City hotel, would have taken her secrets to the grave—if her sister hadn’t gotten there first.

A minute-by-minute account of one of the worst sailing disasters in American history.

Watching the most famous frames in history with Errol Morris.

In 1939, acting on a tip and clues from The Iliad, archaeologists unearthed King Nestor’s palace on Pylos. Recently, another discovery in Pylos, the grave of an even earlier soldier, could change our entire understanding of how western civilization developed.

How a poet and an architect rescued a nation’s riches.

A harrowing journey through Alaskan waters in an ancient tugboat.

A Marxist archaeologist uncovers traces of fugitive slave settlements deep in the Great Dismal Swamp.

How “Count” Victor Lustig, one of America’s great con men, worked his scams.

A short but comprehensive history of solanum tuberosa.

“It’s an old book!” Harper Lee told a mutual friend of ours who’d seen her while I was in Monroeville. “But if someone wants to read it, fine!”

On spending your life among large felines.

A segregated housing development washed away in a flood can still explain why Portland, Oregon, is such a “white” city.

In Russia’s Far East, an orphaned female tiger is the test case in an experimental effort to save one of the most endangered animals on earth.

Hunting people who hunt elephants.

From Norwegian waters to European plates.

The life and times of James McClintock, the man behind the famed H.L. Hunley who also may or may not have faked his own death.

Cassie Chadwick pulled her first con in 1870, at the age of 13. Over the next 30 years, she would scam her way to $633,000, about $16.5 million in today’s dollars.

More than 50 years after Nelson Rockefeller's son went missing following a boat accident in New Guinea, the true story emerges. He made it to shore, but didn't make it much farther.

Excerpted from </em>Savage Harvest</a>.</p>

The neurologist explores the mystery of hallucinations.