JD.com is expanding its consumer base with drone delivery and local recruits who can exploit villages’ tight-knit social networks to drum up business.

When the Great Depression put Plennie Wingo’s bustling Abilene cafe out of business, he tried to find fame, fortune, and a sense of meaning the only way he knew how: by embarking on an audacious trip around the world on foot. In reverse.

Investors all over the world fell for the schemes of the man who called himself Khalid bin al-Saud. But the truth turned out to be more incredible than the lie.

When Aldi arrived in Britain, Tesco and Sainsbury’s were sure they had nothing to worry about. Three decades later, they know better.

How much does the world need to know about a deadly bear attack? That question was tested in the Yukon last year, after the horrific loss of a mother and daughter caused a destructive media storm.

Twenty years after the world first heard about Christopher McCandless, fans of Into the Wild continue to risk their lives to reach the bus where he died.

After the horror of ISIS captivity, tens of thousands of Iraqis—many of them children—are caught up in a mental-health crisis unlike any in the world.

To read the transcript of Erin Hunter’s trial, which runs all of 81 pages and can be digested in half an hour, is to encounter a disregard for human dignity instrumental in producing the most sprawling system of incarceration in the world.

When Zulhumar Isaac’s parents disappeared amid a wave of detentions of ethnic minorities, she had to play a perilous game with the state to get them back.

The photographer who showed us the world always kept coming back to a little town by the sea.

An eccentric Dutchman began living in a giant underground facility built by the German military—and ran a server farm beloved by cybercriminals.

How a middle-class jock from a Texas border town became La Barbie, one of the most ruthless and feared cartel leaders in Mexico.

A German officer is facing trial on terrorism charges. At a volatile time for Western democracy, his story mirrors the story of Germany itself.

Tech giants like Google and Facebook appear to be aiding and abetting a vicious government campaign against Indian climate activists.

After the election of Narendra Modi in 2014, Muslim journalists covering Hindu extremism noticed a change. The masks came off; the facade of courtesy, once flimsy, crumbled altogether.

Selections from the leaked documents about the war in Afghanistan portray a military effort that is ineffective and frequently absurd. (Part of the NYT War Logs series.)

Against all predictions, the Taliban took the Afghan capital in a matter of hours. This is the story of why and what came after, by a reporter and photographer who witnessed it all.

On lucha libre’s exóticos, “wrestlers who dress in drag and kiss their rivals, never quite revealing whether the joke is on their opponents, themselves or conservative Mexican society at large.”

A pair of undercover journalists, a boatload of refugees, 200 miles of ocean and a journey that has claimed more than a thousand lives.

Seventeen-year-old Israel Arenas Durán disappeared after being arrested near his home in Nuevo León. He is one of more than 25,000 who have gone missing in Mexico since 2006.

How a self-taught doctor from Delhi cornered the black market in kidneys, building one of the world’s most lucrative organ-trading rings, until it all came crashing down.

"For 20 beautiful years, my homeland was open and (kind of) free. Now, I fear, it’s closing back up."

Previously: Keith Gessen on the Longform Podcast.

Fifty years ago, Geraldo Foos bought the Manor House Motel. While his customers had sex, he watched from above and took scrupulous notes. Only three people in the world knew what he was doing: Foos, his wife, and the author.

Four men stood on the edge of the Shenzhen Health and Family Planning Commission, threatening to jump in protest. They referred to themselves as “China’s 21st century eunuchs,” damaged by medically-dubious surgeries.