An eight-year campaign to slash the agency’s budget has left it understaffed, hamstrung and operating with archaic equipment. The result: billions less to fund the government. That’s good news for corporations and the wealthy.

Kross cuts through the moans and shouts from off-camera: “Someone go wide!” She’s telling the cameramen to make sure they are adequately capturing the reverse gang bang of Ferrara—the love of her life.

It was one of the most arresting viral photos of the year: a horde of climbers clogged atop Mount Everest. But it only begins to capture the deadly realities of what transpired that day at 29,000 feet.

Jane de Oliveira set out to protect the world’s largest rain forest from the corporate interests that are burning it to the ground. Then the armed men showed up.

Inside the court battle over trans employment discrimination.

How the seizure of Europe’s largest heroin shipment created bloody fallout throughout the world—and sparked still-raging political corruption scandals in Turkey, Greece, and the Middle East.

“Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”

A longtime Harper’s contributor considers America as he dies: “When I died, I died of many things: the failing systems; the weakening of age; the exhaustion of the long war against dying. Finally, I succumbed to the lack of ethics in a California hospital, killed by filth and neglect.”

The International Criminal Court embodied the hope of bringing warlords and demagogues to justice. Then Luis Moreno-Ocampo took on the heir to Kenya’s most powerful political dynasty.

They call me the Greeter. I sell shoes at the Boca Raton Town Center mall — bedazzled stilettos and platforms, neon-strapped pumps saved for special occasions. I stand by the entrance of the store, heels dug into the carpet, tummy tucked in, and I greet people. Hi, how are you, sunshine? Have you seen our shoes today?

The case of Brett Kimberlin.

Those who survived tell the story of twenty three ISIS hostages’ shared months of brutal captivity before some were ransomed and some executed.

The rise and fall of Lisette Lee, the self-proclaimed “Korean Paris Hilton,” who was busted for drug trafficking.

JPMorgan Chase’s $6 billion mistake and the woman who took the fall.

The story of Universe 25, a mouse utopia that became an overcrowded hell, and its implications for the future of humankind.

The story of twelve men trapped in a West Virginia mine, as remembered by the lone survivor.

How General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, became the most powerful intelligence officer in U.S. history.

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

The murky legacy of the former Attorney General.

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

The writer reconnects with an old acquaintance who ten years earlier committed one of the most notorious crimes in New York history.