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.”

On the work of Rachel Cusk.

A profile of the chairman of Fox News.

"Here is what Jack Shafer is," says Erik Wemple, who blogs about the media for washingtonpost.com. "Obviously, very talented, tremendously original and highly informed. But more important, he is utterly uncorrupted by friendship, money, power, anything. He is ruthless with people he doesn't know, but what is impressive is how ruthless he can be with the people he knows. He's impervious to outside influence, and it's a glorious thing to watch."

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

Life in Silicon Valley during the dawn of the unicorns.

A bankrupt music promoter wanted a payday. His detoxing son needed a fresh start. But when their plan for an epic Nas concert in Angola went awry, they found themselves trapped thousands of miles from home.

“Last Chance Hotel” is available now, only in Apple News+. Subscription required. New subscribers can try 1 month free.

The writer (Aaron Sorkin), director (David Fincher), and actors (Jesse Eisenberg & Justin Timberlake) of The Social Network on dramatizing the real story of a 20 year old into “the Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies.”

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.

An examination of the Minutemen movement and death on the border.

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

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

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

“Why are you putting all that muddle in your brain that’s not needed to be there?”

An interview about why giving interviews is totally worthless.

A holiday tradition in the Netherlands involving blackface has sparked a debate about race, the legacy of slavery, and the vestiges of colonialism.

The rise and murderous fall of the Harkey family, the scions of a pecan dynasty.

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.

On Huck Finn, the book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, and the evolution of language and race in America.

Chipotle once fed the equivalent of the population of Philadelphia every day. Then the E. coli outbreak happened.

The uneasy dance of the architecture critic, the big-name architect, the towering new building, and the city beneath it.

Data is the lifeblood of a functioning government. Over the past four years, the Trump administration has destroyed, disappeared, or distorted vast swaths of the information the state needs to protect the vulnerable, safeguard our health, and alert us to emerging crises.

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.)