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.”

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.

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.

“My name is Jackie and I am addicted to waitressing.” An essay on waiting tables.

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?

On the psychological damage punitive isolation inflicts upon Guantánamo and American prisoners alike.

How a blind, destitute man became a world-class composer while living on the streets of New York.

Uncovering the real story behind Capote’s Hand-Carved Coffins.

Academics are convinced it’s an intelligent satire.

He built it as a “portal into a world of quiet.”

What happened to one of the most hated basketball players in NCAA history after playing a single season at Georgetown.

Doug Dodd was a drug kingpin in high school. And now, like the narrator of a Scorcese film, he wants to tell his own story.

Inside the conflict that has caused more deaths than any since WWII—with no end in sight.

An interview with R. Crumb on how he adapted Genesis into comic form.