Buyers from all over America—some of whom had never heard of the Illinois town—came searching for wealth amid the Rust Belt ruins.

If you’re one of four million Ahmadis in Pakistan, posting on Facebook can mean exposing yourself to danger.

An examination of Brazil’s immense tannery industry shows how hides from illegally deforested ranches can easily reach the global marketplace. In the United States, much of the demand for Brazilian leather comes from automakers.

With her new book, the model tries to escape the oppressions of the male gaze. So our writer is keeping some of her secrets.

“Which is how, despite the drinking, the stealing, the racist outburst, the abysmal courtroom performance, the disbarment, and the ultimate imprisonment of his lead attorney, an intellectually disabled man has ended up on the verge of execution.”

A profile of Uruguay President José Mujica, a former revolutionary who’s been shot six times, was imprisoned for 14 years and, since taking office, has shunned the presidential mansion in favor of a small farm while legalizing gay marriage, abortion and marijuana.

Ervil LeBaron, the Mormon Manson, terrorized Mexico’s Mormon compounds, ordering the killing of enemies and relatives alike. Even after he was captured, followers continued treat the “Hit List” he left behind as the word of God.

The former chancellor of New York City schools was not, in fact, “a child of the streets. He was not an academically unmotivated student. He did not come from a deprived family background. He did not grow up in public housing as we understand it today.”

How John Kiriakou, a public opponent of US torture policy, became the first CIA officer convicted of leaking classified information to the press.

A profile of legendary L.A. crack dealer Freeway Rick Ross, now out of jail and trying to sell everything from weaves to his own biopic, written by a journalist who has known him for decades.

The long, strange trip of the Wikipedia founder, who went from being an Insane Clown Posse fan who owned the “Bomis Babe Report” to a jet-setter married to “the most connected woman in London,” all without turning much of a profit.

How a serial killer and his teenage accomplice used listings for “the job of a lifetime” to lure their victims, all down-and-out single men, to the backwoods of Ohio.

The creators of some of the most distinctive craft beers in the world are identical twins from Denmark. They also can’t stand each other.

Previously: Jonah Weiner on the Longform Podcast.

On the life and death of Avonte Oquendo, a 14-year-old autistic boy who disappeared in October after walking out of his New York City school.

Previously: Robert Kolker on the Longform Podcast.

The story of Dean Corll and his accomplices, who killed over 20 teenage boys in the Heights neighborhood of Houston in the early 1970s, and the families searching for their missing sons.

Over the course of a year, Luke Dittrich will be walking the entire 1,933 miles of the Mexico-US border “from the beach to Gulf” with a stroller. The first in a series.

Manny Pacquiao, possibly the greatest boxer of his era and still in his fighting prime, on the campaign trail for a congressional seat in the remote, untamed Southern province of the Phillipines that spawned him.

There’s a price you have to pay for fame, and people who don’t want to pay that price can get in trouble. I accepted the idea of celebrity because of a French expression: “You cannot have the butter and the money for the butter.”

A commencement address to the graduates of Harvard Medical School on how their chosen profession is changing and what they’ll need to learn now that they’re out of school.

A polygamist clan descended from four original families, the Order are believed to run the largest organized crime operation in Utah. When a chest full of gold disappeared, suspicion immediately fell on a group of boys who had split with the cult.

Nearly four years later, I sometimes type his email address in the search box in my Gmail. Hundreds of results pop up, and I’ll pick a few at random to read. The ease of our everyday interactions is what kills me.

Remembering a relationship through IM.

Two days after the Japanese tsunami, after the waves had left their destruction, as rescue workers searched the ruins, news came of an almost surreal survival: Miles out at sea, a man was found, alone, riding on nothing but the roof of his house.

An investigation into the disappearance of a 24-year-old British cruise ship activity director from the Disney Wonder opens the strange and insular world of cruise employees, who vanish mysteriously at alarming rates.

From a childhood in the Kremlin to a trip to New Delhi carrying the ashes of her Indian Communist lover, defection at the U.S. Embassy… “finally to decades of obscurity, wandering and poverty.”