The ridiculousness of trying to rank the best restaurants in the world.

The stories of the eleven men who died on the Deepwater Horizon.

On the rise and fall of the professional sports bettor.

The epic battle to save the islands that inspired the theory of evolution.

A behind-the-scenes account of the tense negotiations, involving Gorbachev, Kohl, Bush, and Thatcher, that led from the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall to a reunified Germany. (Translated from German.)

A survivor of conversion therapy gets the wedding of her dreams.

The history of a color.

A profile of Google’s new CEO, “the most powerful tech giant you’ve never heard of.”

The death of a Russian dissident and how radioactive poison became a tool of assassins.

The complicated process of ghostwriting Julian Assange’s autobiography.

On the particular genius of Tolstoy.

A profile of Doc Johnson, “the Procter & Gamble of sex toys.”

A profile of the chairman of Fox News.

The creator of Wonder Woman makes the case for superheroes.

On the front lines of Bolsonaro’s war on the Amazon.

Life in Silicon Valley during the dawn of the unicorns.

The surreal afterlife of the once-ascendant Dubai, where “the legacy of oil has made everything worthless.”

The birth of the Beastie Boys—an oral history on the 25th anniversary of Licensed to Ill.

The physical rigors of pregnancy tangle with the personal ambitions of a war photojournalist, without limiting her in the least.

Frank Rich on The Promise, Jonathan Alter’s book about the first year of the Obama administration.

Scenario-based forecasts on the future of America, in the style of the C.I.A’s National Intelligence Estimate.

On water in the West, climate change, and how the birth of modern environmentalism lies at the bottom of Lake Powell.

Today, artificial intelligence and information technologies have absorbed many of the questions that were once taken up by theologians and philosophers: the mind’s relationship to the body, the question of free will, the possibility of immortality.

The dissolution of Brooklyn softcore skin-mag Jacques and the marriage of the couple that created it.

The night when Terry Thompson let his zoo-worthy collection of big animals, including lions and a bear, into the wilds of Zanesville, Ohio before shooting himself in the head.