At a dinner party, the author meets one of Afghanistan’s last remaining maskhara — an entertainer, thief and murderer.

A conversation with the former first lady five years into her life as a widow.

Growing up among the tall waves and schoolyard bullies of Hawaii.

How Yvette Vickers, a B-movie starlet who had appeared in Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, ended up mummified in her Los Angeles home last year.

BARR: What makes you laugh? BERNHARD: Well, it's really a myriad of things, but usually it's something that's very organic. It's something that happens on the street. BARR: Like fat people falling down? BERNHARD: No, no . . . [laughs] BARR: That really cracks me up. It's terrible.

A profile of the hardworking Samuel L. Jackson, whose movies have grossed more than any actor’s ever.

In need of a new lead singer, Journey settled on an unknown 40-year-old from the Philippines whose clips they found online. Arnel Pineda was perfect: just a small-town boy, living in a lonely world.

How the relationship between favela-based drug gangs and elite police units tasked with fighting them came to define Rio de Janeiro.

At 37, Brian Wallach was diagnosed with the fatal disease. So he tapped a lifetime of connections to give help and hope to fellow sufferers—while grappling with his own mortality.

When Jennifer Farber disappeared in 2019, suspicion immediately centered on her husband and press coverage almost exclusively painted her as a missing suburban mom. But reducing the 50-year-old’s life to a familiar tabloid trope missed so much of her story.

A year of isolation made me consider all the casual, unwanted touch women endure — and why it’s so hard to refuse it.

The surreal existence of an AOL content writer:

I was given eight to ten article assignments a night, writing about television shows that I had never seen before. AOL would send me short video clips, ranging from one-to-two minutes in length — clips from “Law & Order,” “Family Guy,” “Dancing With the Stars,” the Grammys, and so on and so forth… My job was then to write about them. But really, my job was to lie.

“If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it’s probably because at some level you find “reality” a bit of a disappointment.”

Welcome to World of Wonder, the Hollywood production company that celebrates “outsiders, 16th-minute celebrities, conspiracy theorists, penis puppeteers, dictators, street hustlers, porn stars, hackers, homicidal club kids, gender deviants, furries, plushies, and Tori Spelling.”

The rise and fall of Synanon, an addiction-recovery cult in California, and its charismatic leader, a one-time homeless wino named Chuck Dederich who taught his followers to berate each other for therapy.

In 1967, Stanley Ann Dunham took her 6-year-old son, Barry, on an adventure to Indonesia. An excerpt from A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother.

An essay on craft, excerpted from Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities.

On Jack Idema, a con-man who once ran a pet hotel before reinventing himself as a black-ops secret agent in Afghanistan, and the history of counterinsurgency theory.

A reporter’s memories from a half-century of covering business.

How the “genial Bavarian” version of Adolf Hitler became a global media celebrity, “a plain-living gentleman with a soft spot for dogs and children.”

A profile of Paul Reubens and his subversive alter ego.

"When I was younger, someone took a knife to my clitoris and cut out a small but significant part of me. I blamed my mother. I despised her. I loved her."

In 1965, Wheat was sentenced to death for armed robbery and murder. When his sentence was commuted, he decided to devote the rest of his life to helping people.

A story of truth, lies, and an American addiction.

Reflections on two seasons of loss.