He came home from Vietnam, wrote the novel that became Full Metal Jacket, was nominated for an Oscar and riding high. Then he got thrown in jail for stockpiling stolen library books, started drinking, cut off his friends and fled to a remote Greek island. He never made it back.

What it’s like to work for, compete against, and find out you’re the biological father of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. An excerpt from The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

Seattle’s Aurora Bridge has been the most notorious suicide site in the Northwest for 80 years. On one man’s fight to erect a fence and the race to save one last jumper.

The city of New York is suing a Long Island woman for making NYPD T-shirts. But is it really about money or controlling the brand?

"Imagine a great hall of fetishes where whatever you felt like fucking or being fucked by, however often your tastes might change, no matter what hardware or harnesses were required, you could open the gates and have at it on a comfy mattress at any time of day. That’s what the internet has become for music fans. Plus bleacher seats for a cheering section."

On the U.S. government’s pursuit of a legendary hacker.

A profile of the world’s best League of Legends player, a 19-year-old Korean kid whose nickname is God.

West Virginia has the highest overdose death rate in the country. Locals are fighting to save their neighbors—and their towns—from destruction.

After decades of influence, the media mogul isn’t so much a person as an epoch.

A profile of Paul Manafort, “a great normalizer of corruption” who “weakened the capital’s ethical immune system.”

How do you move on from being the best?

The case against Jonathan Pollard, an American who spied for Israel.

The market for Hirst’s work is in a tailspin. Why?

Facing the inevitability of taking over care for someone who can’t take care of themselves.

A search for the “armpit of America” ends in Battle Mountain, Nevada.

Meet the inspiration for Barbara Loden’s Wanda.

She posted an ad for a roommate. What’s the worst that could happen?

Tracking down 40-odd members of the British band.

It's a Tuesday morning in December, and I'm ringing people called Brown in Rotherham. "Hello," I begin again. "I'm trying to trace Jonnie Brown who used to play in the Fall. He came from Rotherham and I wondered if you might be a relative." "The Who?" asks the latest Mr Brown. "No. The Fall - the band from Salford. He played bass for three weeks in 1978." "Is this some kind of joke?"

In 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for starting a fire that killed his three daughters. The case hinged on the testimony of a jailhouse informant named Johnny E. Webb. Today, Webb says he lied.

At 9:14pm on November 22, 1987, sportscaster Dan Roan was doing the Bears highlights on Chicago’s WGN-TV when the station’s signal was hijacked. Someone wearning a rubber Max Headroom mask appeared, silently, on TV screens around the city. A few hours later, Headroom popped up again on another channel, this time for longer and with audio. Despite FBI and FCC investigations, the case remains unsolved.

On riding China’s Qinghai-Tibet Railway just before it opened:

Staring out at the shimmering tracks and concrete-reinforced embankment extending to the horizon, I can’t help but think of the senior Chinese scientist who confessed to me that the rail line he helped build might not be safe for long.

The founding fathers deserve at least some of the blame for the worst presidencies in American history—they created an office that’s vaguely defined and ripe for abuse. Plus: how to fix it.

“Peril is generational for black people in America—and incarceration is our current mechanism for ensuring that the peril continues.”

How incest and rape go unpunished in the Amish community.