How a middle-class jock from a Texas border town became La Barbie, one of the most ruthless and feared cartel leaders in Mexico.

The economic devastation wrought by the coronavirus has led to enormous food insecurity across America—even in its richest cities.

The real-life events that inspired the new Richard Linklater dark comedy Bernie:

It’s a story about people believing what they want to believe, even when there’s evidence to the contrary. It’s a story about people not being what they seem. And it’s a story, as the movie poster says, “so unbelievable it must be true.” Which it is. I know this because the widow in the freezer was, in real life, my Aunt Marge, Mrs. Marjorie Nugent, my mother’s sister and, depending on whom you ask, the meanest woman in East Texas. She was 81 when she was murdered, and Bernie Tiede, her constant companion and rumored paramour, was 38. He’ll be eligible for parole in 2027, when he’ll be 69.

“Brace Belden can’t remember exactly when he decided to give up his life as a punk-rocker turned florist turned boxing-gym manager in San Francisco, buy a plane ticket to Iraq, sneak across the border into Syria, and take up arms against the Islamic State. But as with many major life decisions, Belden, who is 27 — “a true idiot’s age,” in his estimation — says it happened gradually and then all at once.”

Drones, renditions, and underground prisons; inside the war on terror’s African front.

In the eighteen years since the infamous “Black Hawk Down” incident in Mogadishu, US policy on Somalia has been marked by neglect, miscalculation and failed attempts to use warlords to build indigenous counterterrorism capacity, many of which have backfired dramatically. At times, largely because of abuses committed by Somali militias the CIA has supported, US policy has strengthened the hand of the very groups it purports to oppose and inadvertently aided the rise of militant groups, including the Shabab.

The author expounds on culture and crime in the early 90s:

Yes, I know there are sensational tabloid crimes everywhere and the closeness to the Manhattan media nexus tends to magnify everything. But even so, that was always true. There's just no denying that something has changed in the past decade, that, as our bard Billy Joel sings on his new album, there's "lots more to read about, Lolita and suburban lust." But why? Why is this Island different from all other islands? And why are so many Long Islanders suddenly running amok?

On being gay in the military, three years before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:

A vast majority of those interviewed had been interrogated at least once, and what they described was nearly the same. They said those under suspicion of homosexuality suffer bright lights in their eyes and sometimes handcuffs on their wrists, warnings that their parents will be informed or their hometown newspapers called, threats that their stripes will be torn off and they will pushed through the gates of the base before a jeering crowd.

A pilgrimage to J.D. Salinger’s New Hampshire home:

The silence surrounding this place is not just any silence. It is the work of a lifetime. It is the work of renunciation and determination and expensive litigation. It is a silence of self-exile, cunning, and contemplation. In its own powerful, invisible way, the silence is in itself an eloquent work of art. It is the Great Wall of Silence J.D. Salinger has built around himself.

How coach Jurgen Klinsmann, “soccer’s Alexis de Tocqueville,” is trying to give the US an identity.

The Harvard Law professsor on billionaires, politics and Uber.

A profile of the writer behind “Deep Thoughts” on Saturday Night Live.

Grizzly Bear and the surprisingly crappy economics of indie rock stardom.

After a 19-year-old is convicted of murdering his girlfriend, her family fights to free him from prison.

Tales of mayhem on the set of The Canyons.

The U.S. Department of Justice investigates the Blackwater founder’s new firm.

On the overstated effect of the Santa Ana winds on human behavior and the understated impact of climate change on LA’s seasons.

The fabled venue where the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and Prince emerged.

A veteran with PTSD takes on the fighter jets that fly above his sanctuary on the Olympic Peninsula.

The world’s richest prisoner interviewed from the Siberian prison colony he calls home.

A profile of computational biologist Eric Schadt, the guy who’s figuring out what comes next after the Human Genome Project.

On internships at Disney World, where “labor is meant to have an almost invisible quality.”

A reporter recounts her weekend as an undercover Juggalette.