One man’s story.

Fast food used to be a transitional, temporary work. In Creston, Iowa, it has become a career.

A 58-year-old manuscript will become Harper Lee’s second novel, but questions about Lee’s care continue to swirl in Alabama.

Al Sharpton wanted to be a civil rights leader in the mold of Martin Luther King, Jr. It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

Tracy and Kathryn plan their wedding.

An American writer living in Japan, unread and underpublished, sends an email to a group of writers he doesn’t know informing them that he is committing suicide.

Five of the sixteen women speak.

Virginia state senator Creigh Deeds, a year after his mentally ill son stabbed him multple times before committing suicide.

An inside look at the Democratic infighting and Republican gameplan (“Obama, Obama, Obama”) that led to the midterm landslide.

Javier Flores had hopes of a last-minute change in policy that would allow him to stay in Ohio with his wife and four kids, where he had a good job, a house, paid taxes. It didn’t come.

“Kelsey’s gender identity is ‘non-binary.’ Or, ‘agender.’ It’s what Kelsey feels comfortable with, even though the world keeps insisting, in a million little ways, that Kelsey has to choose.”

On the court system’s excessive fines.

Elias Pompa is the lone deputy in one of the poorest counties in Texas. He is also at the center of the U.S. border crisis.

How the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 rippled around the world, from the battlefield of Ukraine to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to the White House.

A profile of Nora Sandigo, guardian to hundreds of kids born in America to illegal immigrants.

In the latest revelation from Edward Snowden, the U.S. government is shown to collect and retain massive amounts of data on nearly 900,000 people with the most minimal of connections to official NSA targets. The collected information tells our “stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes.”

A family struggles as a 42-year-old husband, father and son becomes increasingly isolated.

Tereza Sedgwick trains to become a nurse aid, the fastest-growing job in America. It pays just better than minimum wage and has one of the highest burnout rates of any career.

Life after a scandal.

One man's transition from military to civilian life.

Previously: Eli Saslow on the Longform Podcast.

In an old mine an hour north of Pittsburgh, 600 federal employees manage paperwork for the government’s retirement system. By hand. On paper. Without computers. The same exact way they always have.

On hit-and-run deaths, and in particular, that of Tiara Nichelle Jackson on the Beltway.

An unlikely bipartisan alliance attempts to get Yes into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

“In all his life, this was the moment of his greatest defeat.” On the death of George McGovern’s daughter on a cold winter night in Madison, Wisconsin.

“Let them say what they want. It’s not about me.”