On the royal family.

On being waterboarded.

On the cult of Winston Churchill and his legacy in the aftermath of 9/11.

An early foreign report on the state of the African continent.

An excerpt from his memoir Hitch-22, about his dreadful years at boarding school.

Way before Ray Kurzweil, Keynes showed us what happens as exponential growth accumulates over time. His projections about how big the economy would become after decades of compounded growth sounded like lunacy to readers during the Great Depression but were amazingly accurate, as was his prediction that humanity would move past its “struggle for subsistence” within a century. At the same time, he overestimated how quickly the work week would get shorter – most of us are working a lot more hours than he envisioned.

This description of what Usenet is and how it works, written shortly before the Web exploded into the mainstream, got important things right: the net’s great variety and utility, its unruliness, and the overall spirit of helpfulness and sharing that persists more than two decades later.

Economist Julian Simon is an intellectual hero of ours. Throughout his underappreciated career he made the case that things were getting better instead of worse, backed up his arguments with masses of data, and won wagers against prominent Malthusians. This piece is a great introduction to his thinking, and gives him some of the recognition he’s due.

Before the Watson supercomputer trounced the two best human Jeopardy! players early in 2011, this article revealed its uncanny ability to mine vast amounts of text in search of answers to tough questions, and to navigate the punning and other wordplay that the quiz show throws at its contestants. This is one of the articles that made us say to each other “Something’s different now…”

Kasparov, a powerful writer, explains how computers came to dominate humans at chess and why this is not cause for alarm that they’ll soon be able to do everything better than we do. Chess has long been an exemplar of human intelligence, and increasingly a metaphor for how humans and machines may co-exist.

The digital economy is not just different, too often it’s invisible. Brian Arthur brings it to life with a description of all the ways it increasingly surrounds us. As “software eats the world”, to use Marc Andreessen’s evocative phrase, we’ll all need to get more and more familiar with this other economy.

Captures the palpable energy coming from San Francisco’s young technology entrepreneurs, who by perceiving no barriers are knocking a lot of them down. We share Heller’s sense that things are happening more quickly there than just about anyplace else.

For the data lovers among us, here’s a slew of encouraging trends from falling poverty and crime, to rising life expectancy, literacy and computer power. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but the positive numbers feed our optimism.

An excerpt from his book on the 1988 presidential campaign, one of the great pieces of political reporting in American history.

Cramer’s most famous piece of writing, a profile of an aging Ted Williams.

How Jerry Lee Lewis, whose nickname was “The Killer,” got away with murdering 25-year-old Shawn Michelle Stevens, his fifth wife.

Cramer on his hometown of Baltimore and its hero, Cal Ripken Jr.

A profile of a Montana sheriff in the midst of a manhunt.

Inside the lives of Sri Lanka’s Tamils as they emerge from a multi-decade war that defined and nearly destroyed them.

Getting the married man back to her place was the easy part.

A insider account of the British real-estate business from 20-year industry veteran.

In tragedy’s wake, a man tries methylenedioxymethamphetamine.

Serial infidelity is not all it’s cracked up to be. For one thing, it’s really expensive.

“And finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought everyday for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you.”