After losing his sight at age 3, Michael May went on to become the first blind CIA agent, set a world record for downhill skiing, and start a successful Silicon Valley company. Then he got the chance to see again.

A profile of the Los Angeles Clippers owner, an oft-sued real estate baron with a documented racist streak and a penchant for heckling his own players, on the occasion of him winning an NAACP lifetime achievement award.

She escaped a crazed psychopath at 16. Decades later, as the BTK serial killer terrorizes Wichita, she has to run for her life again. The identity of her tormentor is too chilling to believe.

But for heaven’s sake, the best-selling author, unapologetic cusser, and fifth-generation Texan would rather not be called that.

The impact of the oil and gas booms taking place all over the world, and our future on fossil fuels.

On “Poor Hartley,” the son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Ten years in the life of a young woman from the Bronx.

A profile of philosopher Timothy Morton.

A profile of the “acrobatic genius of the trapeze”:

As he spoke, he looked up at the pipes and swings in the arena ceiling. A mechanic was working on the rigging, but Tito spoke thoughtfully, for he seemed to be seeing something else. "Sometimes I see movies of myself in the air and I say, 'Jesus, how can I do that?' I wonder who do I think I am ... but, yes, I do admire myself in films sometimes as if I am watching another person. I have sometimes dreamed my tricks at night, you know, and then tried to master them from the dream."

In the days after 9/11, a photo of an unknown man falling from the South Tower appeared in publications across the globe. This is the story of that photograph, and of the search to find the man pictured in it.

Inside the most sensational murder in the history of study abroad.

The rise and fall of Suck.com, the web’s first daily-updated site.

“I never thought about ending my pregnancy. Instead, at 19, I erased the future I had imagined for myself.”

Today we're thrilled to announce our first Longform App Exclusive! One of the best articles of 2014 is now available completely free, only in the Longform App.

In "The Trials of White Boy Rick," a Kindle Single bestseller, Evan Hughes tells the incredible story of Rick Wershe. An infamous teenage drug dealer in 1980s Detroit who flew in kilos of cocaine from Miami and drove a white Jeep with THE SNOWMAN emblazoned on the back, Wershe was arrested at 17 and remains incarcerated. But he now claims he was working with the FBI all along. Was one of Detroit’s most notorious criminals also one of the feds’ most valuable informants?

Everyone at Longform has read this story and we can say with complete confidence: you'll love it. It's a frontrunner for our Best of 2014 list, an epic tale you can't put down. We'll be bringing you many more Longform App Exclusives, but we couldn't have started with a better pick. And it's 100% totally free, only in the Longform App.

Download the app today.

The story of the 1944 German national soccer championship game.

The disappearance of the Ghost Boat and its 243 passengers off the Libyan coast.

A profile of cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, who has spent the last 30 years trying to replicate the human mind.

A conversation with the comedian.

JW: You’ve talked about how you’ve had to explain moral lessons to your daughters, but do it in an inarticulate, catchy way. It’s almost as though you’re writing material for them. What’s the place of morality and ethics in your comedy? I think those are questions people live with all the time, and I think there’s a lazy not answering of them now, everyone sheepishly goes, “Oh, I’m just not doing it, I’m not doing the right thing.” There are people that really live by doing the right thing, but I don’t know what that is, I’m really curious about that. I’m really curious about what people think they’re doing when they’re doing something evil, casually.

How an obscure Australian judge and a hard-charging lawyer put the S&P on trial for the global financial collapse.

The search for the missing Holocaust hero began in 1945. The unending quest tore his family apart.

Searching for (and easily finding) Mark Augustus Landis, the man behind the “longest, strangest forgery spree the American art world has known.”

“Poor white Americans’ current crisis shouldn’t have caught the rest of the country as off guard as it has.”

The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America.