On tragedy, mythology, and the spectacular crash of the Spider-Man musical and its creator, Julie Taymor.

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.

An oral history of the disaster:

Someone said to me, or maybe I read it, that the problem of Chernobyl presents itself first of all as a problem of self understanding. That seemed right. I keep waiting for someone intelligent to explain it to me.

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.

The director on Obama, the state of black cinema, the Knicks, the Nets, the tragedy of public education in America, gentrified New York and why he lives on the Upper East Side.

He is a cheerful old farmer who jokes as he serves rice cakes made by his wife, and then he switches easily to explaining what it is like to cut open a 30-year-old man who is tied naked to a bed and dissect him alive, without anesthetic.

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 city of Boston, the Tea Party movement, and the rightful heir to the American Revolution.

The dark art of presidential debate prep.

On the rise of K-pop.

Meeting the rebel government of an embattled country.

On the Adderall days of college.

On the scientific research of Romanian orphans.

The life of a mid-level bookie.