The battle of Wanat—the most scrutinized engagement in the Afghanistan War—seen from three perspectives: a dead soldier, his father, and his commander.

The inside story of how the city, broke and bleak and nearing the edge, saved itself.

The physical rigors of pregnancy tangle with the personal ambitions of a war photojournalist, without limiting her in the least.

In 1992, a magazine story introduced the world to the photographs of Sally Mann. Here, she responds to the firestorm that article produced.

Meet Faygele ben Miriam, the radical activist “beyond the leading edge” of the same-sex marriage fight.

Frank Rich on The Promise, Jonathan Alter’s book about the first year of the Obama administration.

On water in the West, climate change, and how the birth of modern environmentalism lies at the bottom of Lake Powell.

The science on the link is clear, but the alcohol industry has worked hard to downplay it.

The death of a submissive man-pup and the scrotal silicone injection that killed him.

The author recalls his time as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A new Ned Kelly film explores the masculinity behind the mask.

Without understanding the lingering illness that some patients experience, we can’t understand the pandemic.

The enduring career of the megastar no one really knows.

A day after swimming in an Arkansas water park, Kali Harding was diagnosed with a brain-eating amoeba that kills 99% of the people infects. This is the story of how she survived.

When Chicago’s Stevens Hotel opened in 1927, it was the biggest hotel in the world. By the time it was closed, it had bankrupted and caused the suicide of a member of the Stevens’ family (which included a seven-year-old future Justice John Paul Stevens), and changed the city forever.

How the feds went after Thick Neck, Guilty, Stomper, Gunner, Lucky, Menace, and the rest of the Amernian mob in Los Angeles.

The political maneuvering behind the growth of massive consumer goods warehouses and the health hazards that often follow.

Fifty years later, the men who stole priceless gems from the Museum of Natural History recall the crime.

The story of John Laroche, which led to Orleans’ The Orchid Thief, and tangentially, the film Adaptation.

Spending time with the Tonya Harding Fan Club in the wake of the assault on Nancy Kerrigan.

Henry Luce and Time vs. Harold Ross and The New Yorker. What was at stake in the epic magazine rivalry of the 20th century?

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.