A profile of Justin Timberlake:

This need to succeed, to become his generation’s multi-talented Sammy Davis Jr., is part of what makes him appealing to filmmakers. “I needed someone who could be a Frank Sinatra figure, someone who could walk into the room and command all the attention,” says David Fincher, of casting Timberlake as Sean Parker, the Facebook investor and rogue, in The Social Network. “I didn’t want someone who would just say, ‘I know how to play groovy.’ You can’t fake that stuff. That’s the problem with making movies about a rock star—actors have spent their lives auditioning and getting rejected, and rock stars haven’t.”

“There are people who are wired to be skeptics and there are people who are wired to be optimists. And I can tell you, at least from the last 20 years, if you bet on the side of the optimists, generally you’re right.’

The human lives lost in exchange for cheaper goods.

The story of twelve men trapped in a West Virginia mine, as remembered by the lone survivor.

What really happened between the plaintiffs in Lawrence vs. Texas, the case that ended anti-sodomy laws?

Is a serial killer on the loose in Wellfleet? An investigation.

The anatomy of a sex abuse scandal at a Christian school in Oklahoma.

An independent pawn store stumbles along in an economically depressed Pennsylvania town.

The first article in a two-part history of the Educational Testing Service, the institution behind the SAT.

What former NBA coach Monty Williams learned in the wake of losing his wife.

Sixteen months ago, Otto Warmbier, a junior at the University of Virginia, was arrested in Pyongyang. He’s still there.

“GOD Almighty, you can get killed in Baltimore—for no reason at all.”

In Northern Albania, vengeance is as likely a form of restitution as anything the criminal-justice system can offer.

On growing up in Hollywood, the cost of beating Oprah at the Oscars, and why Jack Nicholson doesn’t act anymore.

The difficult final year of a much-loved and legendarily difficult woman.

Sean Quinn was once a billionaire folk hero, but then things turned very dark in the borderlands.

After a journalist was assassinated, her sons found clues in her unfinished work that cracked the case and brought down the government.

In the bloody civil war, Khaled al-Halabi switched sides. But what country does he really serve?

The fight over an alleged Israeli war crime.

A week in the life of Naomi and Spencer Haskell.

Newton Murray got his first job in 1926. He’s seldom missed a day of work since.

How a sexual assault case in Idaho involving refugee children morphed into an anti-refugee frenzy.