Three primary reasons: A desire for vengeance, the sanitization of executions and, ironically, the reliability of DNA evidence.

Tracking down a Congolese war criminal.

In 1972, James Wolcott arrived in New York armed with a letter of recommendation from Norman Mailer. He hoped to land a job at The Village Voice. Excerpted from his memoir, Lucking Out.

How lucky I was, arriving in New York just as everything was about to go to hell. I had no idea how fortunate I was at the time, eaten up as I was by my own present-tense concerns and taking for granted the lively decay, the intense dissonance, that seemed like normality.

A prescient take on what the US invasion of Iraq would mean for both countries.

New from 7STOPS: </em>Donald Judd, Judge Roy Bean, and the impact each man had on his West Texas home.

A log of the 32 shitless hours that the author spent in the Tombs prison after being arrested during an Occupy Wall Street protest.

A portrait of three high school kids in Arizona forced to live on their own after SB 1070.

James Wood on Saul Bellow:

One realizes, with a shock, that Bellow has taught one how to see and how to hear, has opened the senses. Until this moment one had not really thought of the looseness of a lightbulb filament, one had not heard the saliva bubbling in the harmonica, one had not seen well enough the nose pitted with black pores, and the demolition ball’s slow, heavy selection of its victims. A dozen good writers–Updike, DeLillo, others–can render you the window of a fish shop, and do it very well; but it is Bellow’s genius to see the lobsters “crowded to the glass” and their “feelers bent” by that glass–to see the riot of life in the dead peace of things.

A profile of the Russian spy-turned-Maxim covergirl.

On switching to the gold standard and a trip to the Yukon to witness the modern gold rush.

How prison changed the mother and militant who was sentenced to 75 years for her role in a deadly 1981 Brinks truck heist.

The story of Standard Motor Products, a 92-year-old family-run auto parts manufacturer, and the transformation of the U.S. manufacturing industry.

A Houston man allegedly tries to hire several hit men to kill his wife. Each fails miserably. It becomes the talk of the town.

The profile of a crime syndicate which dominates the European cocaine trade.

How a mysterious twitching epidemic overtook one Western New York town.

On the road with the band:

Axl Rose is carrying on like an Apache. He stormed into his home state for a concert and compared the fans there to prisoners at Auschwitz. He showed up two hours late for a New York show and launched into a tirade against his record company and various other institutions, including this magazine. He steamrolled into St. Louis, and before he left town, a riot had broken out. During an encore in Salt Lake City, he got ticked off because the Mormons weren't rocking and said, "I'll get out of here before I put anybody else to sleep." Then he did.

On a Victorian-era murder case, and the novel it inspired.

A profile of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was sentenced to 50 years today after being convicted of committing crimes against humanity.

The story of Christopher and Jeffrey George, the twin proprietors of a pain clinic empire.

The bizarre story of the disappearance of “downtown legend” John Lurie after a former friend resolved to take his life.

A profile of Eugene Kaspersky, KGB-trained online security mogul.

On the legal history of LSD in America and a researcher who never gave up on the drug’s promise.