“In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That’s the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.”

The aftermath of a revolution:

Amid all the chaos of Libya’s transition from war to peace, one remarkable theme stood out: the relative absence of revenge. Despite the atrocities carried out by Qaddafi’s forces in the final months and even days, I heard very few reports of retaliatory killings. Once, as I watched a wounded Qaddafi soldier being brought into a hospital on a gurney, a rebel walked past and smacked him on the head. Instantly, the rebel standing next to me apologized. My Libyan fixer told me in late August that he had found the man who tortured him in prison a few weeks earlier. The torturer was now himself in a rebel prison. “I gave him a coffee and a cigarette,” he said. “We have all seen what happened in Iraq.” That restraint was easy to admire.

I can’t ask anything. Once in a while if I’m forced into it I will conduct an interview, but it’s usually pro forma, just to establish my credentials as somebody who’s allowed to hang around for a while. It doesn’t matter to me what people say to me in the interview because I don’t trust it.

“The dirty secret of American higher education is that student-loan interest rates are almost irrelevant. It’s not the cost of the loan that’s the problem, it’s the principal—the appallingly high tuition costs that have been soaring at two to three times the rate of inflation, an irrational upward trajectory eerily reminiscent of skyrocketing housing prices in the years before 2008.”

“‘When I heard the facts,” says Matt Kull, one of DiPaolo’s former climbing partners, “I thought, That’s what Dave is capable of.’”

When cops kill civilians, their union is on hand to defend them. In many cases this has come at the expense of the truth.

Glory isn’t part of the deal when you go to work for the federal government.

On the Republican slate for the 2016 presidential election: “Of the dozen or so people who have declared or are thought likely to declare, every one can be described as a full-blown adult failure.”

On our relationship with wild horses.

The director of a covert organization arrives for his first day at work.

The Permian Basin is ground zero for a billion-dollar surge of zombie oil wells.

Over the course of 25 years, he’s repeatedly toyed with the idea of running for president and now, maybe, governor of New York. With all but his closest apostles finally tired of the charade, even the Donald himself has to ask, what’s the point? On the plane and by the pool with the man who will not be king.

Jurors from the Emmett Till trial revisit the case 50 years later.

On the stories we tell ourselves about happiness and the indecent questions we ask women who decided not to become moms.

A legend hangs on.

“This is a story about how the future gets weird.”

A private investigator asks a magazine to write a puff piece on his business. The journalist finds a real story.

When the greatest players in the world go head-to-head, things can get downright angsty.

Two Houston performance artists faux-marry an oak. Controversy ensues about the live installation’s relationship to the gay marriage debate.

What the heck happened?

San Francisco’s forgotten serial killer.

Instead, they got scorched.

How two Jewish American political consultants helped create the world’s largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

A Texas con artist made millions promising prisoners’ families the thing they wanted most: to bring their children home.