How legends of the American music industry made millions off the work of Solomon Linda, a Zulu tribesman who wrote “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and died a pauper.

A Major League umpire learns that his children share the same deadly genetic disease.

On excess, wealth, and teenage love.

On conservative radio host John Ziegler and “the strange media landscape in which political talk radio is a salient.”

How a once idyllic postwar town fell under the sway of a teen-age gang.

How Jerry Lee Lewis got away with murdering 25-year-old Shawn Michelle Stevens, his fifth wife.

A first-hand account of San Francisco in the hours and days after the devastating 1906 earthquake.

A profile of Candy Barr—porn star pioneer, burlesque legend, Texas folk hero.

“Let me state, in all frankness, that I have never harbored personal doubts or a lack of confidence. That may be good or it may be bad. But if you see your actions as objectively correct, then not having doubts is good. I must admit that pride may have influenced my attitudes from time to time. But once I came to a conclusion as to what was right, I had great personal confidence in those ideas.”

After two people are found dead in Yellowstone National Park, a team of investigators tracks down the unlikely culprit: a grizzly bear.

For 60 years, the weekly Evening Whirl attacked the drug lords, whoring preachers, and hypocritical bourgeoisie of St. Louis’ black community, sometimes in rhyming Iambic couplets.

Memories of Marilyn Monroe.

Mykal Riley’s last-second three-pointer kept thousands of fans out of the path of a tornado. Just as remarkable? That Riley was there to take the shot in the first place.

A profile of Jimmy Connors on the eve of the 1978 U.S. Open. His legendary confidence, honed by his mother since childhood, was in free-fall. (He would go on to win the final in straight sets.)

Life on an oil rig in the Arctic.

The daily life of Saddam Hussein.

Life after losing your partner.

A profile of the Carolina Panthers quarterback, this season’s likely MVP.

A report from the border of ISIS territory in Iraq, where civilians are battling to survive.

“You read enough books in which people like you are disposable, or are dirt, or are silent, absent, or worthless, and it makes an impact on you. Because art makes the world, because it matters, because it makes us. Or breaks us.”

Finding the thread of depression in the personal history of a friend’s suicide.

“Since we live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal, I have been making as much noise as I can…”

On the campaign trail with Richard Nixon.

On the hanging of James Murphy, murderer.

Why parties, love, kids, conversation and more are so miserable (at least to Phillip Lopate).