The author participates in the Society for Creative Anachronism’s “Crown Lyst, the twice-yearly event when knights will battle with ancient weapons and the victor will be named the new king.”

It started as a bluebird New Year’s Day in Mount Rainier National Park. But when a gunman murdered a ranger and then fled back into the park’s frozen backcountry, every climber, skier, and camper became a suspect—and a potential victim.

On Dylan Yount, a man who jumped from a San Francisco building, and the people who watched, recorded and, in some cases, encouraged his suicide.

In a matter of months she became one of the world’s most famous porn stars. Three years later, she was dead. The rise and fall of Savannah.

Sallie Belling was an inspirational figure in her community for having overcome a childhood of abuse, drugs, and prostitution — a childhood her sister Rachel says is pure fiction.

They were florists working in Amsterdam’s largest flower market. They were also members of one of the most powerful arms of the Italian mafia. An investigation into how organized crime has gone global.

Forgiveness and the lives of two young men caught in Stockton street gangs.

For decades, the United States and Britain’s vision of democracy and freedom defined the postwar world. What will happen in an age of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage?

How FPAQ, the Canadian group that controls 72 percent of the world’s supply of maple syrup, caused one of the greatest agricultural crimes in history.

The authors spend time in Concord, Mass., with people who impersonate Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

A profile of Perry Fellwock, a.k.a. Winslow Peck, who exposed the NSA in an 1972 article for Ramparts magazine.

On the many lives and careers of Owsley Stanley (1935-2011), chemist, sound design innovator, and outback jeweler, whose name appears in the OED as a synonym for “a particularly pure form of LSD.”

On David Milch; Yale fraternity brother of George W. Bush, literature professor, longtime junkie, creator of NYPD Blue, Deadwood (which was in production when this profile was written), and the forthcoming racetrack-set HBO series Luck.

A profile of silent film comedian Buster Keaton:

The story of his life seems in its twists and dives borrowed from his movies, survival demanding a pure lack of sentiment.

A profile of California congressman Darrell Issa:

A few days after we met in Las Vegas, Issa called me. He was concerned about all my questions regarding his early life and didn’t see why they were newsworthy. The conversation was awkward.

The story of an imam convicted on a suspect terrorism charge and the place he was sent: a jail in the Midwest where nearly all of the prisoners are Muslims.

The ride-share company has 250 lobbyists and 29 lobbying firms registered in capitols around the nation, a third more than Wal-Mart Stores. Among other things.

The story of how Michael Larson cracked the code of Press Your Luck, winning $104,950 in cash, a sailboat ($1,015), and two all-inclusive trips.

Searching for a ghost of Meyer Lansky’s Cuba, a sex-show star who quietly disappeared from the island and was later immortalized in The Godfather Part II.

She was a young plutonium worker whose Honda Civic Hatchback ran off the road and smashed into the wall of a concrete culvert. In her trunk were manila folders full of documents, which immediately went missing.

As an “angry young man,” Ghost World author Daniel Clowes insulted Stan Lee and Art Spiegelman in a graphic novel’s satirical alternate reality. It was born from a nagging self-doubt that, despite the cartoonist’s current recognition and status, lingers.

Michael Brown beat the odds by graduating from high school before his death—odds that remain stacked against black students in St. Louis and the rest of the country.

Sheikh Humarr Khan was a globally renowned expert in tropical diseases, and the hero who ran Sierra Leone’s worst Ebola ward. So why, when he finally fell ill, was he denied the extraordinary treatments that could have saved him?

Being exonerated for a crime you didn’t commit is a hard-won triumph. But how can the state make up for what you’ve lost while in prison?