On the modern era’s answer to James Baldwin.

The three men vying to be the next publisher of the New York Times.

A tale of British gangsters who were determined to be famous.

A moment of racism at Harvard leads the writer to consider Huckleberry Finn.

On the response to the Paris attacks.

Searching for meaning at Baldwin’s soon-to-be-demolished home in France.

To whom does San Francisco’s oldest neighborhood belong?

Trying to make sense our current age of disbelief.

In Florida, sinker cypress harvesters have to dodge the law while working their trade.

A last-minute trip to Sri Lanka.

A reporter returns to My Lai.

A profile of the favorite to become the next UK prime minister.

Central Park wasn’t always so bucolic.

Gangs of toughs—teenagers and the macho middle-aged, usually drunk, occasionally including a couple of off-duty cops—roam the Ramble at night, engaging in an old American pastime: fag bashing. You don't have to be gay. You don't have to be exposing yourself. You don't have to be doing anything except walking through the tangled darkness to be abused, shoved, threatened at knifepoint, kicked, and beaten.

A coffee shop owner finally gets to shut down his store.

Americans learn to love themselves.

What became of Annie Moore, the first person to arrive on Ellis Island?

A weekend at a Christian gay-to-straight sexual reorientation retreat.

What does it take to win the World Taxidermy Championships?

How smallpox went from eradicated disease to the ideal weapon of bioterrorists.

Anesthesiologists, in hugely disproportionate numbers compared to other doctors, are getting high.

What happens to a subway operator after someone commits suicide by jumping in front of his train?

Returning to the scenes of three famous deaths in Seattle.

On the psychology of a rescue worker after years of responding to disaster.

Did Michell Carter’s texts cause Conrad Roy to kill himself?

What happens to American children when their parents are deported?