Over eight years, through millions of letters, the staff of the White House mailroom read the unfiltered story of a nation.

There’s no telling how many guns there are in America—and when one gets used in a crime, no way for the cops to connect it to its owner. The only place the police can turn for help is a Kafkaesque agency in West Virginia, where, thanks to the gun lobby, computers are illegal and detective work is absurdly antiquated. On purpose.

Life on an oil rig in the Arctic.

How one man wants to transport the world’s heaviest cargo in airships that are lighter than air.

A graveyard, a stutter and Ray-Bans: The Vice President, profiled.

Forty-five years ago, Buzz Aldrin became the second man to walk on the moon. It made him one of the most famous people in the world. And it has haunted the rest of his life.

The postscript to a miracle.

They advertise murder for hire but work for the government. Inside the world of America’s fake hit men.

The rigors of youth football.

A report from Sprague’s Sports, a firearms emporium in Yuma, Arizona.

The story of former Vikings linebacker Fred McNeill and the lasting impact of his concussions.

Life as an air-traffic controller.

On the rodeo.

A profile of Joe Paterno.

On the life of illegal immigrant fruit pickers.

Without 1 million people on the ground, on ladders, in bushes—armies of pickers swooping in like bees—all the tilling, planting, and fertilizing of America's $144 billion horticultural production is for naught. The fruit falls to the ground and rots.

500 feet below ground with Ohio coal miners:

I followed them underground, home, to church, to the strip club where they drink and gossip and taunt and jab and worry about one another. I listened while they worried about Smitty, the loner of the group, who had just ordered himself a mail-order woman.

Behind-the-scenes the Cincinnati Ben-Gal cheerleaders.

According to Lou Dobbs, we’re wrong about his stance on illegal immigrants, wrong about why he quit CNN, and wrong about his presidential aspirations. Well, we might actually be right about that last thing.