A profile of Rupert Murdoch, written before his empire began to crumble.

On the insurer’s insurer and calculating the risk of modern catastrophe:

Reinsurers are ultimately responsible for every new thing that God can come up with. As losses grew this decade, year by year, reinsurers have been working to figure out what they can do to make the God clause smaller, to reduce their exposure. They have billions of dollars at stake. They are very good at thinking about the world to come.

An early take on the dark side of cyberspace:

Like many newcomers to the "net"--which is what people call the global web that connects more than thirty thousand on-line networks--I had assumed, without really articulating the thought, that while talking to other people through my computer I was going to be sheltered by the same customs and laws that shelter me when I'm talking on the telephone or listening to the radio or watching TV. Now, for the first time, I understood the novelty and power of the technology I was dealing with.

An orgy of free song-sharing seems to be exactly the kind of thing that the horrified labels would quickly clamp down on. But they appear to be starting to accept that their fortunes rest with the geeks. Or at least they’re trying to talk a good game. “I’m not part of the past—I’m part of the future,” says Lucian Grainge, chair and CEO of the world’s biggest label, Universal Music Group. “There’s a new philosophy, a new way of thinking.”

The 1900 death of Fritz and the battle to define his legacy.

A casino failed to save Tunica, Mississippi.

Looking to Nietzsche for self-help.

The plot to erode the key legislative gains of the civil rights era.

Timothy Treadwell liked to say that, “Grizzlies are misunderstood.” Then one killed him.

Talking to Lee Daniels about Empire, Hollywood, and survival.

Almost ten years after his kidnapping, a man writes to the people who threatened his life.

A map of the Queen of Cookbooks’ rise to power.

“We take the bus when we can’t afford to do anything but disappear.”

How solitary confinement can lead to suicide.

A novelist’s memoir of depression, whose “intrinsic malevolence” as a disease brought him close to suicide.

The great director always refused to get liposuction.

A suburban teen attempts to build a reactor, radioactivity ensues.

A steep discount on pharmaceutical drugs leads to a mass-murder case.

How the French philosopher earned the means to publish freely by winning the lottery—repeatedly.

The 7th grader’s sext was meant to impress him. It nearly destroyed her.

On a centuries-long war that may be coming to an end.

“An idea too good not to believe.”

An ode to the guitarist.

“Your dreams always have to be big. And mine were huge.”

The lives of programmers sent abroad by Pyongyang to make money by any means necessary.