A profile of documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who last January received “a curious e-mail from an anonymous stranger requesting her public encryption key.”

An interview with the literary agent about the state of the book industry and how, at least for him, it continues to be quite lucrative.

How Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, with a little help from the Bush Administration, got 140 trees chopped down in a national park to improve his view and ruined the life of a park ranger in the process.

To his friends and family, Ross Ulbricht was a compassionate, warm soul known for random acts of kindness. To the F.B.I., he was Dread Pirate Roberts, the mastermind behind the Silk Road who was willing to order hits to protect his black market operation.

Jeffrey Holliman was deep in debt and out of options. So he took to the woods outside his small East Texas town. Then he started taking from his neighbors.

Since 2007, when they first heard that “the Florida of Russia” was being awarded the Winter Olympics, two Dutch journalists have been documenting everyday life in Sochi and how it has changed in the run-up to the Games.

Fifty years after Joseph Mitchell published “Joe Gould’s Secret” in The New Yorker, one last question about Gould—the identity of his anonymous benefactor—is answered.

Why did Anthony Gatto, the greatest juggler alive—and perhaps of all time—back away from his art to open a construction business?

Previously: Jason Fagone on the Longform Podcast.

An entrepreneurial primer from the founder of 37Signals. “So here’s a great way to practice making money: Buy and sell the same thing over and over on Craigslist or eBay. Seriously.”

At times, Mr. Hsieh comes across as an alien who has studied human beings in order to live among them.

A profile of the Zappos CEO.

In 1967, Stanley Ann Dunham took her 6-year-old son, Barry, on an adventure to Indonesia. An excerpt from A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother.

Fred Wilpon, the owner of the hapless New York Mets, had more than $500 million tied up with Bernie Madoff when the Ponzi scheme was exposed. Now he may be forced to sell his beloved ballclub.

How digital shifts the way we produce, distribute, and consume content:

The future book — the digital book — is no longer an immutable brick. It's ethereal and networked, emerging publicly in fits and starts. An artifact ‘complete’ for only the briefest of moments.

On the shift from the “triple-A video-game production cycle — the expensive development process, in other words, by which games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Uncharted, and BioShock are unleashed upon the world” towards the simpler pleasures of gaming on the iPad.

An abridged history of violence in "America's first suburb."

Note: Elon Green is a contributing editor to Longform.

Rogue cops in the LAPD Rampart division’s anti-gang CRASH unit (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) were involved in everything from drug smuggling and bank robberies to, allegedly, the murder of Christopher “Notorious BIG” Wallace.

A profile of a breakout male porn star:

The porn machine churns out performers to satisfy every fantasy, be it MILF, dwarf, fat, granny, or gang bang. But if you’re interested in watching a young, heterosexual, nonrepulsive man engage in sex, James Deen is basically it.

How one of the most maligned cast members in SNL history ended up a talking head on Fox News.

An essay on craft, excerpted from Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities.

In 1979, a Pulitzer was given to “an unnamed photographer of United Press International” who documented a mass execution in Iran.

His name is Jahangir Razmi – and, nearly three decades later, he wants the credit.

On Jack Idema, a con-man who once ran a pet hotel before reinventing himself as a black-ops secret agent in Afghanistan, and the history of counterinsurgency theory.

A nonconformist pastor sent a colony of Welsh people to Argentina to try to preserve the language in 1865. 150 years later, the traces are still there.

A murder case in Mississippi catches the eye of amateur sleuths on Facebook, who proceed to harass everyone involved in the case.

A reporter’s memories from a half-century of covering business.