You get steeped in this stuff as a kid, even if some part of you was always skeptical, it's hard to lose the residual sense that everything unfolding in the world—from natural disasters to commerce and geopolitics—signals some approaching doomsday.

She survived an evil, gruesome attack. Her partner did not. An account of a victim, a widow, telling her story on the witness stand.

Update, 4/16/12: This piece was just awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

On the Republican slate for the 2016 presidential election: “Of the dozen or so people who have declared or are thought likely to declare, every one can be described as a full-blown adult failure.”

He appeared out of nowhere. No name, no memory, no past. He was the only person the FBI ever listed as missing even though they knew where he was. And he couldn’t be found.

In 1936, a school group from south London went on a hike in the Black Forest. Despite the heroic rescue attempts of German villagers, five boys died. Eighty years later, locals are still asking how it happened.

The original writer of the Village Voice story that inspired “Boys Don’t Cry” looks back on her reporting—and the huge error she still regrets.

A massive raid on a long-running cockfighting ring in Arkansas has raised complex questions about ICE, immigration, and the future of a centuries-old tradition.

The story of a marginalized, mentally ill young man who drew the FBI’s attention with his social-media posts and then staggered into its elaborately constructed snare.

Black patients were losing limbs at triple the rate of others. The doctor put up billboards in the Mississippi Delta. Amputation Prevention Institute, they read. He could save their limbs, if it wasn’t too late.

The story of a sheriff’s deputy in Minnesota who took his own life.

"If anything happens to me," Ruettimann said, "give this to the reporter." After Ruettimann's death, Hereaux took the file down off his desk. Inside was a thick stack of loose-leaf documents, a manila folder stuffed with letters, and a catalog-size clasp envelope labeled "Reports." Written in black permanent marker in the margin of the envelope was the reporter's name: mine.

In 1980, a bankrupt gambler came up with a plan to get his money back. He built an incredibly complex bomb, one that was impossible to defuse and that only he knew how to move, and snuck it into a Lake Tahoe casino with an extortion note demanding $3 million. Part of the plan worked. Part of it did not.

‘‘Just imagine what it was like to be him,’’ Walton added. ‘‘It was 50 years of him being 18 inches taller than everyone and having the brain that he had. Imagine being this jazz head coming up during black power. This is just a dude who has a different head.’’

"Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn’t believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn’t prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit. In the midst of a conversation, she said to me, “Do I understand the thrust of your position? You are not certain you exist?” I hesitated a moment, and I said, “I can’t be sure.” And she then said to me, “And who, by chance, is answering that question?” With that little exchange, she undermined the philosophical structure I had built for myself. "

On the evening of November 7th 1974, the 7th Earl of Lucan, an inveterate gambler and Backgammon champion with a taste for power boats, snuck into his estranged wife’s basement. He then bludgeoned their nanny with a lead pipe and placed her in a canvas sack, before attempting to murder his wife. Recognizing his voice, she convinced him that she could him escape, then slipped out a bathroom window. Lord Lucan was never seen again.

John Ackerman has spent millions procuring a majority of the known caves in Minnesota, which add up to dozens of miles of underground passageways and likely make him the largest cave owner in the U.S. He collects and charts them in the name of preservation, but his controversial methods have created many opponents.

Richard Gere, AIDS anxiety and the search for the “Original Gerbil.”

The battle to contain the Asian tiger mosquito–one suburban, above-ground pool at a time.

On the British and American fascination with rocking chairs and upholstery springs in the 19th century.

On the shootings, and the response, in Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, and Dallas this summer.

How the Syrian president stays in power.

A filmmaker goes to court to fight the television commercial break.

A weekend with the only person on Earth who can survive five venomous snakebites in 48 hours.