The story of a high school quarterback’s descent into madness, and its tragic end.

A letter to his unborn son about the wonders of being an only child.

A profile of 17-year-old Teresa Scanlan, the newly crowned Miss America.

An oral history of James Brown, from Macon to the top.

On Sam Jain and Daniel Sundin, the fugitive kings of scareware.

On the tangled early careers of Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Mary Karr and Jeffrey Eugenides.

The Starbucks-fueled saga of how Jim Romenesko, beloved journalism blogger, took an early retirement.

A step-by-step proposal for fixing the broken economics of big-time college sports.

Con man turned pastor turned con man; a profile of a serial scammer and the movie he tried to make about himself.

In Michele Bachmann’s home district evangelicals have pushed anti-gay policies to the school board. After a rash of suicides, teens are fighting back.

A Yale student on why nearly a quarter of her classmates will end up working for Wall Street.

A tech reporter tells the story of his ruined digital life.

The truncated, violent lives of Richard Matt and David Sweat before their prison escape.

Why “the legal equivalent of outer space” continues to exist, fifteen years after 9/11.

Ten stories on guns, ranging from competitive shooting, to girl gangs in Chicago, to the sisters and mothers of mass shooting victims.

Five of the sixteen women speak.

The inside story of how Yahoo’s C.E.O. lost her way.

The everyday violence of some urban neighburhoods in America takes its own emotional toll.

Karaoke renditions of ‘My Way’ have led to murders in the Phillipines.

How a French journalist recruited a posse of Brazilian parking lot attendants and pizza-delivery guys and created Hollywood’s most addictive entertainment product.

The mother of a child born with a deformed brain responds, heartbreakingly, to an academic study claiming that people are happier without kids.

Tony Judt on sex, the academy, and dating a graduate student while chairing NYU’s History Department.

A profile of Rahm Emanuel, written during his first congressional campaign in Illinois. Emanuel was running to fill the seat vacated by Rod Blagojevich.

Ten years ago, Esquire did a piece about Harvard Law grads who had eschewed their degrees. One of them was the late comedian.

A quasi-oral history of the party that was JFK’s 1961 inauguration.