The history of a powerful and violent secret society in the islands of southern Chile.

A women’s shelter in Afghanistan protects its inhabitants from their own families.

Being friends with Susan Sontag was thrilling, but also “shot through in the end with mutual irritation.”

In the deep ocean, a swimming sea-worm called a “green bomber” can throw sacs of light when attacked.

Maybe Clinton isn’t a “good candidate,” as political junkies like to say. But that might not matter in 2016.

In the fantasy and superhero realm, the most chilling and compelling villain of the year was surely Magneto, who in X-Men: First Class is more of a proto-villain, a victim of human cruelty with a grudge against the nonmutants of the world rooted in bitter and inarguable experience. Magneto is all the more fascinating by virtue of being played by Michael Fassbender, the hawkishly handsome Irish-German actor whose on-screen identity crises dominated no fewer than four movies in 2011. Magneto, more than the others, also evokes a curious kind of self-reproach, because his well-founded vendetta is, after all, directed against us.

He was the world’s foremost collector of presidential memorabilia, an outsider with a pathological need to fit in. He was also a thief.

Coping with a brother’s suicide.

We tell stories about the dead in order that they may live, if not in body then at least in mind—the minds of those left behind. Although the dead couldn’t care less about these stories—all available evidence suggests the dead don’t care about much—it seems that if we tell them often enough, and listen carefully to the stories of others, our knowledge of the dead can deepen and grow. If we persist in this process, digging and sifting, we had better be prepared for hard truths; like rocks beneath the surface of a plowed field, they show themselves eventually.

How an increase in the earth’s temperature could wipe out a continent.

A report from the oil boom in North Dakota, where unemployment is 3.4 percent and McDonald’s gives out $300 signing bonuses.

A story of endurance in the face of unimaginably brutal conditions.

The night when Terry Thompson let his zoo-worthy collection of big animals, including lions and a bear, into the wilds of Zanesville, Ohio before shooting himself in the head.

What happened after Joan Lefkow’s husband and mother were murdered in her home.

The strange saga of a 2009 Gary Oldman profile that his manager, Douglas Urbanski, aggressively sought to kill.

"Mr. Heath's motives are dishonest in the least...supposed 'journalism' at its very lowest...while Mr. Heath may find his sloppy reporting cute, in fact it is destructive, and he knows it...his out of context and uninformed pot shots...out of context swipes at me...stretching the most basic rules of journalism...in certain ways has aspects of a thinly disguised hit piece... a hole filled swiss cheese of wrong facts, misleading insinuations, and in general lazy, substandard, agendized non-reporting...again and again Mr. Heath attempts to turn the piece into a political piece...GQ has allowed Heath to go for the cheap shot..."

The French influence in Africa is on the wane, and the Chinese are coming.

Participating in the Dakar Rally.

The story of Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who walked off his base in Afghanistan only to be captured by the Taliban.

How the former Bush advisor is “reengineering the practice of partisan money management in hopes of drumming Barack Obama out of the White House.”

A survey of sex on a Saturday night in New York City.

A profile of “not just the toughest but the most corrupt and abusive sheriff in America.”

How Indians with the surname Patel came to own 1/3 of the motels in America.

In 1916, a down-on-its-luck traveling circus hung its star elephant.