The author expounds on culture and crime in the early 90s:

Yes, I know there are sensational tabloid crimes everywhere and the closeness to the Manhattan media nexus tends to magnify everything. But even so, that was always true. There's just no denying that something has changed in the past decade, that, as our bard Billy Joel sings on his new album, there's "lots more to read about, Lolita and suburban lust." But why? Why is this Island different from all other islands? And why are so many Long Islanders suddenly running amok?

Lockheed Martin is the largest government contractor in history. They train TSA workers and Guantanamo interrogators. Every American household pays them around $260 per year in taxes. The new military industrial complex is a single company.

Basketball is considered one of the most difficult sports to effectively bet on, therefore gamblers like Haralabos Voulgaris who make a handsome living on NBA lines are a rare breed, whose knowledge of the game and personal statistical databases rival most of the league’s front-offices’.

John C. Favalora is a sallow old man who looks like the corpse of Dom Deluise. He likes attractive young men to sit on his lap and allegedly treats them to trips in the Florida Keys. He was, until recently, part owner of a company that makes "all natural" boner-inducing beverages. He's also the Archbishop Emeritus of Miami.

Behind the scenes, a small team of FBI agents spent years trying to solve a stubborn mystery — whether officials from Saudi Arabia, one of Washington’s closest allies, were involved in the worst terror attack in U.S. history. This is their story.

“Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.”

Baltimore-area renters complain about a property owner they say is neglectful and litigious. Few know their landlord is the president’s son-in-law.

How greed is sucking Texas dry.

The full text of a 20,000-word ebook on the interpreters who worked alongside American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their fates once they were no longer of service.

President Trump hailed him as a catalyst of the summit with Kim Jong-Un. But what happened to Warmbier—the American college student who was sent home brain-damaged from North Korea—is even more shocking than anyone knew.

In 2017, the Hall of Fame Louisville coach’s career collapsed under a string of scandals, leading to his firing from the school he had coached for 16 years. Now, Pitino is finding himself in Greece, coaching Panathinaikos, working for a self-styled Bond villain, and enjoying a new chapter of his life.

“It is a beautiful hand: strong, with long, slender fingers and smooth skin, its nails ridgeless and pink. If you didn’t know Jonathan Koch—if you first met him, say, on the courts at the Calabasas Tennis & Swim Club—you might not suspect that his hand previously belonged to someone else.”

Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, req­uisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press.

Suzan Russaw is 70 years old. She lived in affordable Palo Alto housing for decades. Then, in 2013, she was forced to move into her car. On the new homeless of Silicon Valley.

“There is perhaps no other political-military elite in the world whose aspirations for great-power regional status, whose desire to overextend and outmatch itself with meager resources, so outstrips reality as that of Pakistan.”

Guz Dominguez says he was trying to help baseball players from Cuba; the U.S. government says he was smuggling athletes. The truth is more complicated.

“The sex abuse is a symptom of a culture that does not allow the athletes to have their voice.”

I don’t think there’s anything that I’m not afraid of, on some level. But if you mean, What are we afraid of, as humans? Chaos. The outsider. We’re afraid of change. We’re afraid of disruption, and that is what I’m interested in.”

North Carolina’s Alexander County is a Southern Baptist stronghold. It’s also home to Mitchell Gold, an outspoken gay rights activist and the CEO of one of the region’s largest employers.

Sexual harassment. Hate speech. Employee walkouts. The Silicon Valley giant is trapped in a war against itself. And there’s no end in sight.

What is it like when a city abandons a neighborhood and the police vanish? Business owners describe a harrowing experience of calling for help and being left all alone.

For years, Mark Zuckerberg has faced criticism that Facebook is bad for democracy. A cache of leaked audio reveals the story of how much ultimately comes down to his judgment—and the forces freezing him in place.

With only a single breath, Alexey Molchanov, history’s most daring freediver, is reaching improbable depths—and discovering a new kind of enlightenment as he conquers one of the world’s wildest sports.

Mary Kuanen escaped the violence of Sudan only to live through her husband’s murder in suburban Denver. This is her life today.

Robert Marbut is in the business of helping cities criminalize homelessness.