The journey from a Sudanese refugee camp to an Atlanta police academy.

An audacious plan to create a new energy source could save the planet from catastrophe. But time is running out.

After the 1919 Black Sox scandal, Ring Lardner, America’s first great sportswriter, walked away from the game.

An oral history of James Brown, from Macon to the top.

From a small Ohio town to Afghanistan, a portrait of the perpetrator of a massacre.

A report from the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk—a.k.a. “The Last Nazi”—who died on March 17.

Lessons learned about Washington from investigating how the “grand bargain” fell apart.

The rise of the long-haul trucker/serial killer, as excerpted from Ginger Strand’s book Killer on the Road.

Margaret Profet, evolutionary biologist and MacArthur grant recipient, disappeared in 2005. She has neither been seen nor heard from since.

Spins from the DJs at Atlanta’s seminal Magic City strip club can turn nobodies into hip-hop stars.

How an apartheid-era psychiatrist went from torturing gay soldiers in South Africa to sexually abusing patients in Canada.

The story of a transplant from a 26-year-old bike mechanic to a 41-year-old fireman with severe burns.

How a tiny island 5,000 miles from the U.S. mainland has produced so many NFL players.

A report from the border of ISIS territory in Iraq, where civilians are battling to survive.

Ten stories on guns, ranging from competitive shooting, to girl gangs in Chicago, to the sisters and mothers of mass shooting victims.

The stubborn Senator from Vermont considers a run for the White House.

Beatrice Munyenyezi told her New Hampshire neighbors that she was refugee from the Rwandan genocide. Half of that was true.

From Stefani Joanne Germanotta to Lady Gaga: the self-invented, manufactured, accidental, totally on-purpose creation of the world’s biggest pop star.

Playing beer pong with David Axelrod—and other scenes from the lives of young, high-profile aides in the Obama White House.

How the National Enquirer became a 2010 Pulitzer contender without straying from its roots as a supermarket tabloid.

How $100 million in diamonds, gold, and jewelry disappeared from Antwerp Diamond Center’s super-secure vault.

A writer struggles to defend his arbor vitae trees from a pack of hungry deer—“an episode of great vexation and buffoonery.”

A report from Camp Hope, the tent city that’s sprung up next to the Chilean mine where 33 men have been trapped since early August.

A profile of the director, written from the set of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.