On the culture of plastic surgery in Los Angeles, and how the reporter’s life changed when she got a pair of fake boobs.

The bizarre story of the disappearance of “downtown legend” John Lurie after a former friend resolved to take his life.

The life of Reverend Charles Moore, who died by self-immolation in the parking lot of a Texas strip mall.

He was one of Israel’s greatest spies. Then he brought his own country to the brink of war.

A manifesto from one of the first professional bloggers on a new ‘golden age of journalism.’

On a group of women whose lives were forever altered by the Leif Garrett episode of Behind the Music.

An interview with the founding editor of the New York Review of Books, who died Monday.

The curious rise and spectacular crash of the Alliance of American Football, a new league that went under in just eight weeks.

A profile of the author, who “looks to history not just for the origins of America’s ailments but for their remedy, too.”

An interview with Gabriela López, the head of the San Francisco Board of Education.

How social media is fueling gang activity in Chicago.

Happiness is a warm pool.

The underground culture of big waves and wild times in 1961 Malibu, and the gang of teenage boys who worshiped at the feet of the beach’s dark prince, surfing legend and grifter Miki Dora.

On the photographer Catherine Opie who has “made a study of the freeways of Los Angeles, lesbian families, surfers, Tea Party gatherings, America’s national parks, the houses of Beverly Hills, teen-age football players, the personal effects of Elizabeth Taylor, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, Boy Scouts, her friends, mini-malls, and tree stumps.”

On the nature of violence.

When my brother was twelve, I found six mice nailed to the wall of the abandoned tree house in the woods near our apartment. He spent a lot of time there. It seemed to me the little mouse faces were frozen in agony. As though they’d been alive when he’d hammered the nails through them.

On the start of the high school football season in Odessa, Texas. An adaptation published alongside the release of Bissinger’s 1990 book of the same name, which led to the movie and the show.

The creator of Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy offers advice to the Dartmouth class of 2014.

The gangs of Brooklyn’s Brownsville, an area with the higest concentration of public housing in America.

The backstory of “The Duke in His Domain,” Truman Capote’s 1957 New Yorker profile of Marlon Brando.

He outsold Elvis, signed one of the first pay-for-play contracts and befriended Martin Luther King Jr. A profile of Harry Belafonte.

Searching for the real reason why a bunch of kids partying at the empty home of an NFL player became a national story.

On the foreign workers of Dubai, who now make up 90 percent of the city’s population.

A profile of the Bronx immigrant family on the other end of your Chinese takeout menu.

The story of Trina Garnett, “one of approximately 470 prisoners in Pennsylvania serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers.”

A man living in the Boston suburbs learns he could be one of the only survivors of a 1982 massacre in Guatemala.