An analysis of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Cotton Tenants, the original manuscript.

Inside the N.S.A.’s mission to spy on just about everyone.

“And the Holocaust trumps art every time.”

The journey from a Sudanese refugee camp to an Atlanta police academy.

What the CIA really knew about Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who disappeared in 2007.

The case of a teenager who didn’t kill his classmates—but talked about it.

The dissolution of Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng’s marriage amidst evidence of her affairs with Tony Blair and Eric Schmidt.

A student fires three shots during a sixth period social studies class. “Then nothing happened, and that’s a problem.”

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.

A look inside Amazon’s Pennsylvania distribution warehouse, where workers endure 110 degree temperatures and extreme productivity quotas.

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.

A memory of interviewing the late great songwriter Townes Van Zandt shortly before his death.

Steven Donziger, an American lawyer, headed up a successful lawsuit against Chevron on behalf of Ecuadorans. Then the legal tables turned on him.

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.

From a small Ohio town to Afghanistan, a portrait of the perpetrator of a massacre.

How group of misfits in Texas including Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings snubbed Nashville and brought the hippies and rednecks together. An oral history of outlaw country.

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

On Jenny Craig’s European expansion and how dieting differs in France and the States.