Paul Newman’s will held some unpleasant surprises for his daughters.

The story of “Madam Walker,” who built a thriving empire of hair products for black women.

Activist investor Bill Ackman set out to destroy the multilevel marketing company. But did he wind up helping it succeed instead?

The producer of Big Star’s Third and piano player on ‘Wild Horses’ recounts a life of music in Memphis.

A profile of Joe Biden, written not long after the car crash that killed his wife and daughter.

How the Caltech basketball team, losers of 310 straight conference games, figured out a formula for winning.

Vengeance, abuse, and the strange double standards of death penalty politics.

The origin story of Gabriel García Márquez’s classic.

A trip to the zoo, Charlie Kaufman’s new film, and human despair.

How an up-and-coming company went bust.

How corporations are using the First Amendment to destroy government regulation.

A profile of Evgeny Morozov, “either the most astute, feared, loathed, or useless writer about digital technology working today.”

For centuries, a little town in Belgium has been treating the mentally ill. Why are its medieval methods so successful?

The coordinated government attack on queer Russia.

How a man of little education and little means invented a simple machine that changed the lives of women in rural India.

Former Bob Ney, Mark Foley and William Jefferson underlings provide a street-level view of D.C. opprobrium.

The web has revolutionized communications and commerce, but what does it mean for art?

A tony bedroom community in Los Angeles, a kidnapping gone horribly wrong, and the birth of a teenage fugitive.

A profile of the Russian spy-turned-Maxim covergirl.

Protests against the Putin regime are already drawing over 100,000 in sub-zero weather; what will they become when spring arrives?

Ed Rosenthal recounts the six days he got lost in Joshua Tree National Park.

An interview with the experimental filmmaker and Hollywood chronicler Kenneth Anger, 85.

On life in Los Angeles, and the specter of a second riot.

The murderous tale of Washington D.C. fabulist Albrecht Muth and his late wife Viola Drath.

Women who kill their newborns usually claim to have been in denial about their pregnancies. Can you carry a child to term without realizing it?