The story of a risky management style gone bust.

The saga of Naji Mansour.

Vivien Thomas was paid a janitor’s wage, never went to college, and still became a legend in the field of heart surgery.

The unexpected evolution of Olympic medalist Debi Thomas.

On the dying city of Port Arthur, Texas, and one man’s fight to save it.

Inside the five-year (so far) production of the Ilya Khrzhanovsky film Dau:

Khrzhanovsky came up with the idea of the Institute not long after preproduction on Dau began in 2006. He wanted a space where he could elicit the needed emotions from his cast in controlled conditions, twenty-four hours a day. The set would be a panopticon. Microphones would hide in lighting fixtures (as they would in many a lamp in Stalin's USSR), allowing Khrzhanovsky to shoot with multiple film cameras from practically anywhere — through windows, skylights, and two-way mirrors. The Institute's ostensible goal was to re-create '50s and '60s Moscow, home to Dau's subject, Lev Landau. A Nobel Prize–winning physicist, Landau significantly advanced quantum mechanics with his theories of diamagnetism, superfluidity, and superconductivity. He also tapped epic amounts of ass.

The low-key swingers of sleepy Amarillo, Texas find themselves relentlessly harassed by a militant Christian group.

An oral history of The Right Stuff.

An army of Western luxury-lifestyle purveyors flock to China to teach the country’s new billionaires how to act rich.

Robert Marbut is in the business of helping cities criminalize homelessness.

The ramifications of a U.S. company’s tourism operation on former Maasai land.

The story of Olympic boxing hopeful Quanitta Underwood, who was sexually abused by her father as a child.

On the complex nature of a presidential second term and what Obama would do if he wins one.

A history of The New Yorker and its editors, from founder Harold Ross through Tina Brown.

How Cantor Fitzgerald is bringing the principles of day trading to sports betting in Vegas.

A profile of the late artist and author Norris Church Mailer, who stayed with her husband Norman despite his notorious philandering.

When (temporary) cities swell; a short history of the Burning Man festival.

He used to weigh 1,000 pounds. Now he has to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

DNA evidence exonerated six convicted killers. So why do some of them recall the crime so clearly?

The town welcomed hundreds of Somali refugees. Then a private militia decided to go “ISIS hunting.”

“Watching the cells populate, it rapidly became clear that many of us had weathered more than we had been willing to admit to one another.”

An interview with Cobain a few months after the release of In Utero.

The particular sheen of America by Amtrak.

Last summer, Arthur Medici went surfing off the coast of Cape Cod. He never made it back.