On the death of a high school basketball star in New York City.

The story of a bizarre—and bizarrely effective—smear campaign.

The reclusive director comes out of his shell at 73.

One of the most accomplished Himalayan guides works at an outdoor retailer in Lower Manhattan.

Searching for answers after unexplained brain injuries afflicted dozens of American diplomats and spies.

A profile of Lorena Bobbitt.

Does the ubiquitous dance troupe really present five thousand years of civilization reborn?

The history of a sundown town.

Inside a literary Ponzi scheme.

From Kenya to Amsterdam to New Jersey, an industry collapses in a matter of weeks.

Millions of human artifacts circle the Earth. Can we clean them up before they cause a disaster?

"I’m not familiar with books on style. My role in the revival of Strunk’s book was a fluke—just something I took on because I was not doing anything else at the time. It cost me a year out of my life, so little did I know about grammar."

How a tattooed video store clerk with a history of drinking and drug use ended up at an Islamic self-help class leading to the birth of ISIS.

He was a shining star of a tight-knit group of rising Black male models in London. Why did he die at the hands of another model?

Peter Zumthor, who recently won the Pritzker Prize after a career of few buildings and mostly modest-in-size projects, on the “architecture of actually making things”

A profile of Martha Nussbaum, whose ideas illuminate the often ignored elements of human life—aging, inequality, and emotion.

A profile of a previously unknown rookie pitcher for the Mets who dropped out of Harvard, made a spiritual quest to Tibet, and somewhere along the line figured out how to throw a baseball much, much faster than anyone else on Earth.

The bodies in the chalet were found in a secret chamber, arranged radiating out from a point like spokes in a wheel. Some had suffocated, some had been shot. They all were followers of a mysterious prophet, Luc Jouret.

How the case of a poisoned college student in China, cold for 18 years, has suddenly turned into “what may be the largest amateur online manhunt in history.”

A profile of Judy Clarke, who takes on the most heinous, notorious defendants in America, trying to save them from the death penalty. Until Dzokhar Tsarnaev, she usually succeeded.

When rival gangs confronted each other in the parking lot of a Hooters-esque restaurant, bullets flew. But was the whole a police setup?

An annotated transcript:

MR. SEALE: [The marshals are carrying him through the door to the lockup.] I still want an immediate trial. You can’t call it a mistrial. I’m put in jail for four years for nothing? I want my coat.

A Wikipedia-style dissection of the case that inspired The Fugitive. The accused, Dr. Sam Sheppard, claimed to have struggled with an intruder before being knocked out and dumped on a beach, his wife’s left corpse in their house.

How did an obscure artist who survived the Cultural Revolution become a viral sensation and suddenly the surreal, sexy center of Fashion Week?