An excerpt from Little Failure.

A trip to Azerbaijan.

Confessions of a Google Glass Explorer.

The author on his love for the Russian language.

A profile of M.I.A.

The night it all went wrong.

At age 17, Eustace Conway moved into the North Carolina woods. He hasn’t compromised since.

Ida Wood, who lived for decades as a recluse in a New York City hotel, would have taken her secrets to the grave—if her sister hadn’t gotten there first.

Matthew Weigman was blind, overweight, 14 and alone. He could also do anything he wanted with a phone. Sometimes that meant calling Lindsay Lohan. Other times it meant sending a SWAT team to an enemy’s door.

How could a one-time rising golf star be gifted with top 10 talent yet struggle to break even on the LPGA tour, possess Madison Avenue magnetism yet be such a loner? But the most difficult thing to understand is this: Why did she take her own life?

The tale of itinerant wanderer Chris McCandless. The magazine story that preceded Into the Wild.

A profile of the reclusive musician.

If Charles Brogden pilfered a kitchen, he washed the dishes and mopped the floor before he left. And the law just couldn’t seem to run him down.

Meeting Christopher Thomas Knight, a.k.a. the North Pond Hermit, who lived alone in the Maine woods for nearly 30 years.

On the mysterious life of an the isolated heiress.

What the sensation of an uncontrollable itch can tell us about how the brain operates.

The shared life of Tatiana and Krista Hogan.

How some scientists are turning to connectomes—maps of the brain’s neural circuitry—to make the case for brain preservation, mind uploading, and eternal life.

Susie Mc­Kinnon cannot hold a grudge. She is unfamiliar with the feeling of regret and oblivious to aging. She has no core memories. And yet she knows who she is.

Is there really such a thing as brain death?

Eagleman, a neuroscientist, describes how groundbreaking advances in the science of brain have changed our understanding of volition in criminal acts, and may erode the underpinnings of our justice system.

Edna Kelly’s brain goes under the knife.

On the moral responsibility to break unjust laws.

An author pleas to amend his entry.

On the wonders of being an only child.

On rape jokes.

Davis was imprisoned on charges of first degree murder.

Max Soffar, who has liver cancer, has been on death row since 1981. He’s almost certainly innocent.

On the imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus.

A voting rights march, from Selma to the statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama.

Rebellious teens on the Sunset Strip.

On the “jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless” writing of Pauline Kael.

How one obscure sentence upset the New York Times.

Ripping out the guts of an “utterly preposterous document”: the Starr Report on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Susan Berman's life was colorful. Her death was shrouded in mystery.

"I have information that's going to blow the top off things," Susan told her.

"What do you mean?" Kim asked. "What information?"

"Well, I don't have it myself," said Susan. "But I know how to get it."

Kathie Durst’s friends spent almost twenty years hoping someone or something would catch up to Durst. They just didn’t think it would happen in the form of the murder of Morris Black.

Bobby was odd in other ways. He was a pothead—he smoked like a chimney. He had facial tics. But his strangest tendency—the thing that no one could ever fathom—was that Bobby belched. Belched and farted, actually. All the time. Anywhere. In front of anyone. Serial gas expulsion was his statement to the world, went the theory. It was his way of saying, “I’m Bobby Durst, and fuck you if you don’t like it.” That was the theory, anyway.

In Galveston, Durst made unusual friends in the seedy bars he frequented.

As the bus driver had guessed, the young black cross-dresser who rode the No. 6 and disembarked at 53rd and P 1/2 with Durst had indeed departed Galveston a few days after Morris Black's headless trunk and dismembered limbs were discovered in the bay. When I tracked down Frankie in an apartment in another Texas city this past January and asked about the timing of her departure, her bulbous eyes narrowed and she shook her head emphatically. "I'm not even gonna comment," she said quietly. "I didn't have nothing to do with it; I ain't gonna be nobody's damn witness; I'm not gonna be subpoenaed to come to no court—mm-mm! He cut that man up! First the head, then..."

On living with Durst’s abandoned furniture in Galveston.

“Are you sure he won’t mind,” I asked Klaus, suddenly hesitant. Durst’s murder trial was underway in the county courthouse a few blocks away from where we were standing. He had been charged with first-degree murder, but was claiming self-defense. I imagined Durst on the witness stand and it seemed wrong, suddenly, to take his belongings without his permission. Later, people who learned about my furniture would tell me that taking Durst’s things was wrong for other reasons. How could you? they would ask, mouths agape. He was a murderer! But I’ve never been sentimental or superstitious. More than disgusted or scared by the furniture, I was curious. But at the same time, I didn’t want to feel like I was stealing from someone—murderer or not.