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.

A profile of Grace Coddington, creative director of Vogue and break-out star of The September Issue.

James Wood on Saul Bellow:

One realizes, with a shock, that Bellow has taught one how to see and how to hear, has opened the senses. Until this moment one had not really thought of the looseness of a lightbulb filament, one had not heard the saliva bubbling in the harmonica, one had not seen well enough the nose pitted with black pores, and the demolition ball’s slow, heavy selection of its victims. A dozen good writers–Updike, DeLillo, others–can render you the window of a fish shop, and do it very well; but it is Bellow’s genius to see the lobsters “crowded to the glass” and their “feelers bent” by that glass–to see the riot of life in the dead peace of things.

On the future of Britain’s finances.

An oral history of the University of Texas Tower massacre.

A profile of Sage Kimzey, the 20-year-old king of rodeo.

The mysterious death of one of college basketball’s most promising coaches.

An accidental evening with Yeats, in the spring of 1937.

The life of one of America’s bloodiest hitmen.

South Florida is being overrun with cane toads, which can weigh almost six pounds. No one knows why they are swelling in numbers or when their population growth will slow.

The author goes in search of his father’s days as a member of an elite club of sport parachutists.

A judge on the history and injustice of the plea bargain in America.

An interview with Murphy at the apex of his power, just before the release of Harlem Nights.

How the next generation of Indian women could break the country’s cycle of early motherhood and forced marriage.

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.