The first in-depth piece on Michele Bachmann.

A profile of Romney from his last presidential campaign, with a focus on how he evolved from professional consultant to professional candidate.

On the calculated political career of Rick Perry, and what it means for his presidential bid.

Notes from the Nevada stretch of the Ron Paul campaign trail last time around.

A look at Jon Hunstman, the former Utah governor and ambassador to China now running well behind in the polls, as he prepared to announce his candidacy.

An exhaustive profile of Gingrich, then a 41-year-old congressman balancing a new role on the national stage with the spotlight on his personal life that came with it.

A profile of Rick Santorum published as he began a reelection campaign for the U.S. Senate, a race widely considered a stepping stone to a run for the White House. Santorum went on to lose.

A primer on long-shot candidate Herman Cain, former pizza chain CEO and current Tea Party star.

On the rapid rise of the New Jersey governor, who doubles as pundits’ favorite noncandidate.

A game called Spacewar is developed by early computer engineers in their spare time, improved in university comp-sci labs, and ultimately made available in coffeeshops for 10 cents per game.

Advice from 1982 on how and why one should buy a personal computer.

The Silcon Valley origin story.

A conversation with a 29-year-old Jobs.

Ted Nelson’s Xanadu project was supposed to be the universal, democratic hypertext library that would help human life evolve into an entirely new form. Didn’t turn out that way.

A 42,000-word, three-continent spanning “hacker tourist” account of the laying of the (then) longest wire on earth, FLAG, fiber-optic link around the world.

An early take on the dark side of cyberspace.

The definitive story of a ubiquitous software. PowerPoint’s origins, its evolution, and its mind-boggling impact on corporate culture.

A profile of Marlon Brando, age 33, holed up in a hotel suite in Kyoto where he was filming Sayonara.

It was the middle of the day in the steamy Philippine jungle and the sun was merciless. Director Francis Ford Coppola, dressed in rumpled white Mao pajamas, was slowly making his way upriver in a motor launch.

A “fanatical Lynch fan from way back,” David Foster Wallace visits the set of Lost Highway, never actually talks to the director, and writes a profile.

Inside the five-year (and counting) production of the Ilya Khrzhanovsky film Dau.

In Austin in 1973, politicos and hippies could get together and create violent, visionary horror films for $60,000. So they did. The story of how The Texas Chainsaw Massacre got made:

The battle to make The Godfather pitted director Francis Ford Coppola against producers including Robert Evans, and the production itself against the real-life mob.

An oral history of Goodfellas.

How Warren Beatty seduced the studios into making the comedy Ishtar, which set the modern bar for cinematic debacles.

A jailhouse interview with Steve Washak, who made millions selling “natural male enhancement” pills.

On Ambien and the search for the next blockbuster insomnia drug.

On the Adderall days of college.

New medicines can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Are they worth it? A look at how a pair of pharmaceutical companies set their prices.

The pharmaceutical quest to give women a better sex life.

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.

Fifty years ago, birth-control pills gave women control of their bodies, while making it easy to forget their basic biology—until, in some cases, it’s too late.

The story of Christopher and Jeffrey George, the twin proprietors of a pain clinic empire.

Undercover at a dealership to learn the tricks of the trade, of which there are many.

Undercover in the online-shipping industry.

Undercover in a women’s insane asylum. On an island. In 1887.

Undercover as a Juggalette.

Undercover going through airport security.

Undercover with Afghanistan’s drug-smuggling border police.

Undercover in high school.

An oral history of the oral history master.

A classic piece of participatory journalism, a genre Plimpton basically invented, on his very brief tenure as quarterback of the Detroit Lions.

On Plimpton and the founders of The Paris Review.

An interview years in the making.

A father and his 9-year-old daughter watch Harvard play Yale in football.

Plimpton’s son on his dad’s signature style.

In January 1966, the month In Cold Blood was published, Truman Capote sat down with Plimpton to discuss the new art form he liked to call “creative journalism.”

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.

A profile of a young Dylan and the early ’60s folk scene.

”I don’t want anybody to be hung-up … especially over me, or anything I do.”

The making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville.

On the visionary architects who, along with an extremely helpful tax break, gave birth to the American mall.

A writer tries to make sense of a national landmark.

Over the last five years, so-called “sweepstakes cafes,” known in Las Vegas and elsewhere as “casinos,” have opened in malls from Florida to Massachusetts. On the law-bending rise of a $10 billion industry.

The soap opera of an off-brand mall in West Houston.

How Hollister employs the dark art of “immersive retail” to bring the allure of the mall to its flagship store in New York.

Spending time with the Tonya Harding Fan Club in the wake of the assault on Nancy Kerrigan.