How Bert Schneider, a well-heeled Hollywood producer with a coke problem and a soft spot for radical politics, smuggled Huey Newton, the leader of the Black Panthers who was awaiting trial on a murder charge, into Cuba in 1974.

How the Bounty, a busted-up replica built in 1960 for the film Mutiny on the Bounty, ended up 100 miles out to sea during the height of Hurricane Sandy.

In 1913, a ship carrying 31 explorers got stuck in the Arctic ice, hundreds of miles from civilization. The leader left to carry on the expedition. Others stuck with the boat. Help wouldn’t come for a year.

The strange saga of Gordon Todd Skinner, a psychedelic aficionado and government informant who is now serving time in prison for kidnapping and torturing his wife’s teenage lover.

An American woman's travels and memories of her Russian husband.

A child’s hobby transforms slowly into a grown man’s obsessive project.

The story of Tyrone Hood, who served 21 years for a murder he didn’t commit, and the Chicago criminal justice apparatus that allowed a serial killer to go free.

A profile of the Megaupload founder, who has started a political party in New Zealand as the U.S. continues to fight for his extradition.

Bryan Goldberg’s site for women was widely mocked when it launched a year ago. Today it has 15 million readers per month and some of its harshest early critics are on the payroll.

A French soccer star’s rise and fall from sports to cons to the Nazi Party.

“I am having a moment, but I only want more. I need more. I cannot merely be good enough because I am chased by the pernicious whispers that I might only be ‘good enough for a black woman.’”

A sumo wrestling tournament. A failed coup ending in seppuku. A search for a forgotten man. How one writer’s trip to Japan became a journey through oblivion.

In 1943, a young research scientist found a cure for TB. It should have been the proudest moment of Albert Schatz’s life, but ever since he has watched, helpless, as his mentor got all the credit.

“For people who pay close attention to the state of American fiction, he has become a kind of superhero.”

“The only thing I’m able to conclude after my trip here is that it’s incredibly difficult for a poor country to go about getting un-poor.”

During the last decade, more than 1,500 Americans died after accidentally taking too much of a drug renowned for its safety: acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol.

On Pham Xuan An, Time’s Saigon correspondent during the Vietnam War, who led a double life as an intelligence agent for Ho Chi Minh.

Manson at 79: in poor health and walking with a cane, obsessed with Vincent Bugliosi, willing to talk at length with a reporter for the first time in years, and visited every weekend by a 25-year-old woman he calls Star.

In 1997, 8-year-old Chaneya Kelly reported that she had been raped by her father, Daryl Kelly, sending him to prison for up to 40 years. Since then, she’s wanted more than anything to take it back.

Diary entries concerning innocent Americans abroad.

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A mother defends her family lineage against disruption from envious cousins.

For a daily short story recommendation from our editors, check out Longform Fiction or follow @longformfiction on Twitter.

A forgotten birthday cake sets off a chain of unexpected events.

For a daily short story recommendation from our editors, check Longform Fiction or follow @longformfiction on Twitter.

The placebo response doesn't care if the catalyst for healing is a triumph of pharmacology, a compassionate therapists, or a syringe of salt water. All it requires is a reasonable expectation of getting better.

On Silvio Berlusconi’s hedonism.

Berlusconi is Italy’s waning Hugh Hefner, alternately reviled and admired for his loyalty to his own appetites—except that he’s supposed to be running the country.