Adriaan Vlok, a former apartheid leader, seeks redemption.

A dispatch from the Central African Republic.

A season with the American Football League of China.

The downside of opening up.

How the Syrian president stays in power.

“Americans find it hard to believe that foreigners are unalterably foreign, for they have seen generations of immigrants who became Americans.”

A history of scandal and civil war within the first family of the Unification Church.

The complicated case of Michelle Kosilek, a murderer fighting for sexual reassignment surgery.

How citizen journalists are covering the war.

An interview with the literary agent about the state of the book industry and how, at least for him, it continues to be quite lucrative.

A two-week island experience involving a 70-year-old interloper, his mannequin girlfriend, a couple of dogs and very little else.

Meet Mark Millar, the brains behind our era’s most violent, ingenious comics.

The money has dried up, the models are broken and “there are simply many, many more high-priced lawyers today than there is high-priced legal work.” On the end of an era.

On the sins of the lazy translator.

Their religion prohibits lawsuits. The energy companies know it.

How Georgia halted its drug epidemic, but not its addicts–and what the U.S. might learn from their efforts.

On the barely regulated business of looking after kids.

The case for gay marriage.

The fight for South Africa’s future.

How Republicans came to be the party of white people.

The outgoing treasury secretary on his financial crisis regrets, putting policy before politics, and whether Washington will ever be able to strike a grand bargain.

A trip to CES, “what a World’s Fair might look like if brands were more important than countries.”

With abortion access limited in many states, should some home abortions still be a crime?

Robert Blake, Bonny Lee Bakley, and the misery of celebrity.

“Oh God, everybody hates Jane Austen. They don’t have the balls to say it.”