“Most cities spread like inkblots; a few, such as Manhattan, grew in linear increments. Paris expanded in concentric rings, approximately shown by the spiral numeration of its arrondissements.”

While Facebook and Twitter get the scrutiny, Nextdoor is reshaping politics one neighborhood at a time.

A study of resilience in does and other female creatures.

He was a convicted felon who found a niche in Seattle’s construction boom. As the region’s fortunes rose and fell—and rose again—so did his. Then a fatal boating accident came for Michael Powers’s fairy-tale ending.

A history of the women’s television channel and its push to employ female writers and directors long before it became an issue in Hollywood.

The story of the Caughnawagas, “the most footloose Indians in North America,” and their gradual assimilation.

A conversation with Prince.

A profile of photographer Richard Avedon from early in his career.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. may face violence and murder in their home countries. What happens when they are forced to return?

How the President’s son-in-law, despite his inexperience in diplomacy and his lack of security clearance, became Beijing’s primary point of interest.

Night raids by the “Hash Monster” and other perils facing American soldiers at a remote base in the wilderness of the Paktya Province as they attempt to turn over power to the Afghan Army.

Computer programming once had much better gender balance than it does today. What went wrong?

Cycling through relapse and recovery, and the industry that enables both.

The story of twelve men trapped in a West Virginia mine, as remembered by the lone survivor.

The story of Ota Benga, captured in the Congo, displayed at the World’s Fair, and brought to the Bronx Zoo in 1906.

The rise of the “wildly lucrative” herbal incense business, and the downfall of one company.

The strange saga of Sarah Phillips, who went from message board commenter to ESPN gambling columnist and hid her identity from editors, scamming many of the people she met along the way.

John Aldridge fell overboard in the middle of the night, 40 miles from shore, and the Coast Guard was looking in the wrong place. How did he survive?

Scandal, conspiracy, and cover-ups in the theft of the “Irish Crown Jewels” from Dublin Castle.

The story of the manhunt.

One frosty October morning in 1991, a newborn baby boy is found inside a plastic bag in an Oslo graveyard. This is his story, in nine parts.

A profile of Marlon Brando, 33, holed up in a hotel suite in Kyoto where he was filming Sayonara.

These women want the right to compete in big-wave contests—and get paid as much as men do.

Polarization. Conspiracy theories. Attacks on the free press. An obsession with loyalty. Recent events in the United States follow a pattern Europeans know all too well.

A political history of Britain.