After eight women are murdered in Louisiana, what was initially thought to be the work of a serial killer becomes something much more troubling.

Humans play. So do animals. Perhaps that’s why we’re all here.

“And yet we live still in Cheney’s world. All around us are the consequences of those decisions.”

The Civil War started 150 years ago today. A primer on how and why.

How slot machines snuck into the mall, along with money laundering, bribery, shootouts, and billions in profits.

On the combined force of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia, a Tea Party stalwart.

In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year.

On Gabo and his complicated role in the country of his birth, Colombia.

How LA-style gang life migrated to the slums of San Salvador.

An immigrant from Lebanon, a hair-cutting fortune, and the dream of building a castle on an island in British Columbia.

The author was living in a friend’s basement after a bad breakup, unable to eat. Then he had lunch with Jacques Pépin.

The poet died when he was hit by a car in 1965. Everything else about his demise is a mystery.

Susan Hawk was the first woman elected as Dallas County district attorney. She also suffers from depression.

Why The Undefeated, a site announced more than two years ago, still hasn’t launched.

An attempt to figure out how the Times columnist came to care more about personal morality than politics.

On the history of political polls, which have become more influential and less reliable over time.

In a remote corner of Romania, neighbors kill each other over tiny strips of land.

How a disgruntled group of University of Miami football fans got the head coach fired by flying insulting airplane banners high over Sun Life Stadium.

Inside one woman’s often conflicted world.

How the new store is—and isn’t—changing Detroit.

On the fear-mongering history of sex education.

A man in a small town in India builds local power by owning the only computer in his village.

Mamoru Samuragochi’s story turned out to be too good to be true.

Joseph Mitchell used composites in his non-fiction, invented characters and added flourishes to his facts. Does it matter?