The author, on book tour when the pandemic set in, reflects on what could have been worse—and what could be better.

Observers have long warned of rising forced labor in Xinjiang. Satellite images show factories built just steps away from cell blocks.

A respected professor shot dead through the mansion window. A quaint New England town shaken to its core. One all-consuming obsession in Whip City.

In Virginia, paramilitarism gets a rebrand.

The joys—and absurdities—of finding oneself abandoned in a desolate landscape.

Possible clues about Lincoln’s murder in the unlikeliest place.

The backstory of “The Duke in His Domain,” Truman Capote’s 1957 New Yorker profile of Marlon Brando.

In 1945, a fire tore through the home of George and Jennie Sodder. Four children escaped; five vanished.

A lesson in ethics.

A generation that has seen inestimable violence comes of age in Juarez.

A 27-year old reporter is kidnapped in Somalia and held hostage for over a year.

What the CIA really knew about Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who disappeared in 2007.

Embedded with a U.S. bomb squad in Baghdad.

The story that inspired The Hurt Locker.

On Norman Bel Geddes, pioneer of miniatures and maker of the “most iconic World’s Fair exhibit of all time.”

Testimonies about the Soviet war in Afghanistan, reported by the 2015 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

While accused killer Robert Durst was in Galveston, he made a few friends besides Morris Black.

There are two roles to play in the new world of on-demand everything: royalty or servant.

A mayday call in the critical moments after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform.

The shooting death of the last wild Passenger Pigeon, atomic energy, mastodon watering holes, and other footnotes in Ohio history.

Alaska brims with stories of people who vanish and are given up for dead. Once in a while, the dead return.

Three days, 64 people shot, six of them dead: Memorial Day weekend in Chicago.

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

Learning to live in Earth’s coldest conditions.

John Franzese Jr. helped send his father, notorious Colombo family mobster Sonny Franzese, to prison. Then he turned up in Indianapolis.

How the tiny town of Roundup, Montana became a hub in Amazon’s supply chain.