On the foreign workers of Dubai, who now make up 90 percent of the city’s population.

The dissolution of Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng’s marriage amidst evidence of her affairs with Tony Blair and Eric Schmidt.

“Radically brilliant. Absurdly ahead of its time. Ridiculously poorly planned.” An oral history of the National Sports Daily.

A profile of Jaron Lanier, virtual reality pioneer and the author of You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.

Three decades ago, Mohamed Siad Barre, commander of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, head of the politburo of the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party and the last ruler of a functional Somali state, built vast concrete buildings all over Mogadishu. The beautiful city on the coast of the Indian Ocean, with its Arabic and Indian architecture, winding alleyways and Italian colonial-era villas, was dominated by these monuments. They were Third World incarnations of Soviet architecture, exuding power, stability and strength. The buildings – like the literacy campaigns, massive public works programmes and a long war against neighbouring Ethiopia in the late 1970s and early 1980s – were supposed to reflect the wisdom and authority of the dictator.

A profile of Harold Camping, a Christian radio host who (falsely) predicted the end of the world.

A memory of interviewing the late great songwriter Townes Van Zandt shortly before his death.

A profile of Harold Ramis, director of Groundhog Day, who died today.

A profile of the Bronx immigrant family on the other end of your Chinese takeout menu.

From a small Ohio town to Afghanistan, a portrait of the perpetrator of a massacre.

How group of misfits in Texas including Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings snubbed Nashville and brought the hippies and rednecks together. An oral history of outlaw country.

The story of Trina Garnett, “one of approximately 470 prisoners in Pennsylvania serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers.”

A man living in the Boston suburbs learns he could be one of the only survivors of a 1982 massacre in Guatemala.

The legalizing of euthanasia is usually seen as a advancement in human rights. But is it appropriate for cases of non-terminal illness?

The longtime editor of the London Review of Books on editing, the “fussed” people on Twitter, and “preferential treament” for women.

Finding the thread of depression in the personal history of a friend’s suicide.

[Part 1 of 2] The story behind this spring’s spate of retributive murders in Southwest D.C.

In 2007, Harrah’s made 5.6% of its total Las Vegas revenue off of a single person: Terrance Watanabe.

Inside Rebecca West’s vast Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, an eerily timeless travelogue of the Balkans written on the eve of WWI.

A writer struggles to defend his arbor vitae trees from a pack of hungry deer—“an episode of great vexation and buffoonery.”

Taibbi on the Tea Party. “After lengthy study of the phenomenon, I’ve concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They’re full of shit.”

On a book of photographs shot by Leni Riefenstahl in the 1950s and 1960s depicting an African tribe.

A grandmaster on the computers that have bested him and how we have misunderstood the implications of artificial intelligence.

A profile of the director, written from the set of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.