A sociologist’s controversial first book and the debate over who gets to speak for whom.

Behind the character Ursula in The Little Mermaid was a legendary drag queen from Baltimore named Divine.

How the feds flipped a corrupt American soccer official named Chuck Blazer and brought down the sport’s governing body.

How a young Afghan trucking-company owner became spectacularly rich.

The definitive story of a ubiquitous software. PowerPoint’s origins, its evolution, and its mind-boggling impact on corporate culture.

A profile of Sabrina Harman, the soldier who took many of the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs.

A 12,000-word profile of recently departed Brazilian President Luiz Inácio da Silva, the “most successful politician of his time.”

How Lalit Modi built a billion-dollar cricket empire—only to be exiled from his sport and homeland.

Early last year, 10 churches were torched in East Texas. The culprits? Two Baptist teens having a crisis of faith.

How automated ‘execution algorithms’ are taking the world’s markets on a wild ride that few economists can even understand, much less control.

During her brief tenure as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin was a genuinely effective, bipartisan legislator. What went wrong?

The story of a college town and the most devastating tornado in Alabama history.

A campaign diary of Luther Campbell’s (better known as Dr. Luke of 2 Live Crew) run for Mayor of Miami-Dade County.

On the eve of the release of The Tree of Life, a look back at the turbulent making of Terence Malick’s debut.

A profile of Florida legend—and pardoned killer—Charlie Driver.

In the wake of Rumours, the band endures a series of break-ups.

The rise and dissolution of the magazine that nearly took down a president.

The story of a Marine who saved innumerable lives, then got fired.

A profile of the hard-living, cop-dodging artist Dash Snow, published two years before his death of an overdose.

A profile of under-fire Goldman Sachs Ceo Lloyd Blankfein.

At work with the scientists standing on the precipice of a grand unified theory of the universe. Or failure.

As “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” comes to an end, a conversation with gay servicemen past and present.

What it means to become a superpower while three quarters of the population lives on less than fifty cents per day—four scenes from India in transition.

The original article on Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s, published a month before the release of Moneyball.

Retirement for chimps is, in its way, a perversely natural outcome, which is to say, one that only we, the most cranially endowed of the primates, could have possibly concocted. It's the final manifestation of the irrepressible and ultimately vain human impulse to bring inside the very walls that we erect against the wilderness its most inspiring representatives -- the chimps, our closest biological kin, the animal whose startling resemblance to us, both outward and inward, has long made it a ''can't miss'' for movies and Super Bowl commercials and a ''must have'' in our laboratories. Retirement homes are, in a sense, where we've been trying to get chimps all along: right next door.