“J.Crew employees reveal themselves by the nakedness of their ankles. It’s as if the company’s uniform, ambiently dictated by Lyons, is enforced only from the knees down.”

The story of the attack that killed U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, told from the persepctive of the security agents there to protect him.

In 1913, a ship carrying 31 explorers got stuck in the Arctic ice, hundreds of miles from civilization. The leader left to carry on the expedition. Others stuck with the boat. Help wouldn’t come for a year.

How Hafeez Contractor is creating an alternate India in the sky, where professionsals are “insulated from the chaos that has long hamstrung their homeland.”

A child’s hobby transforms slowly into a grown man’s obsessive project.

He’s spent decades dodging the law. He’s escaped from jail twice by helicopter. He’s given millions to the poor. The story of how Vassilis Paleokostas, Greece’s most wanted man, became a folk hero.

Ted Ngoy overcame poverty and escaped genocide, made a fortune off doughnuts and gambled it all away. Now he’s back on top, with hundreds of shops in California, but under attack from Dunkin’ Donuts.

A profile of Chris Rock as he makes one last attempt to jump from standup to leading man.

On the theft of 6 million pounds of maple syrup from Canada’s strategic reserve and the group of free market renegades who are fighting “The Maple Wars.”

On driving (and walking) in the Middle East – from Syria to Lebanon, across Saudi Arabia to Dammam, in a taxi through war-torn Beirut.

Diary entries concerning innocent Americans abroad.

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A forgotten birthday cake sets off a chain of unexpected events.

For a daily short story recommendation from our editors, check Longform Fiction or follow @longformfiction on Twitter.

All told, the military acknowledged this summer, 14 soldiers from the base have been charged or convicted in at least 11 slayings since 2005 — the largest killing spree involving soldiers at a single U.S. military installation in modern history.

You get steeped in this stuff as a kid, even if some part of you was always skeptical, it's hard to lose the residual sense that everything unfolding in the world—from natural disasters to commerce and geopolitics—signals some approaching doomsday.

She surveyed her former possessions, the stuff of a world now lost. "I'd be happy with just walking away from all of this," she concluded. "Dump it all and just start over. Happy birthday — I'm alive."

A brutal story from the Times’ cub Metro reporter:

''We're dying,'' he said. ''Why is this happening? Is it because we loved each other too much or not enough?"

From the Econo-Lodge to the Porcupine Freedom Festival, on the campaign trail with former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, the fringe candidate who doesn’t really seem he should be a fringe candidate.

On July 22, 2013, 66-year-old Gerry Largay began hiking a 32 mile section of the Appalachian Trail. She hasn’t been heard from since.

President Lincoln worked very hard all his life. After he died, his corpse kept a gruelling travel schedule, too.

On Elena Ferrante:

Different names, every time, but the reaction is the same: a momentary light in the listener’s eyes that fades to bored disappointment. An Italian woman from Naples, whose name you wouldn’t know. Who did you expect?

I’ve read stories from people who say they always knew they were attracted to the same sex, or that they figured it out at a young age. I’m not one of them.

The transcript from an lecture presented by In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture-capital arm, on the ethics of drones, military robots, and cyborg soldiers.

On the Italian island Lampedusa— “politically Europe, but geographically Africa”—as a wave of African immigrants is due to arrive from Libya by boat, ruining the tourist season.