On the lonely life of a for-profit pageant queen.

Riding along on the Lunch Express.

On set in Mexico with the Duke.

Encounters with the sea.

Nine innings with Mr. Baseball.

The dangerous work of harvesting your food.

The author participates in the Society for Creative Anachronism’s “Crown Lyst, the twice-yearly event when knights will battle with ancient weapons and the victor will be named the new king.”

The rise and fall and rise of Hill flack Kurt Bardella, and what it says about D.C. culture.

“Morning and night the hordes of clerks and stenographers and business men who fill the offices of down-town New York have poured across Newspaper Row and City Hall Park with scarcely a glance at the labor progressing underfoot that is going to bring them so many minutes nearer their work in the morning, and at night so many minutes nearer their play.”

A pivotal Civil Rights rally recalled, 50 years later.

On the deadly explosion in West, Texas.

On disposing of a dead sea lion, and the pitfalls of memory.

The weird history and uncertain future of New York City’s shoreline.

On Japan’s Hokkaido, an island the size of Ireland, and its rebel leader of lore, Shakushain.

An interview with Rick Rubin.

The story of 1968’s Golden Globe, a race to see who could become the first sailor to circumnavigate the world solo without stopping.

The story of a St. Louis handball court.

Confessions of a white-collar dope fiend.

Most of what you know about women’s fertility rates is wrong.

“In the past, when he has spoken, he has sometimes replied to questions by protesting that he is boring. Maybe he believes that this is the case, or just believes there is no point in allowing himself to seem interesting in the way interviewers usually want people to be. Still, he has told himself that tonight he will be truthful. He’s feeling calmer these days. He has not had one of these conversations for a while, and he intends it to be a long time before he has another.”

Why hundreds of Buddhist monks moved from Taiwan to Prince Edward Island, buying up thousands of acres of land in the process.

“When I look at Mr. McCreery’s boat… I know that life is wild, dangerous, beautiful.”

An interview with the artchitects responsible for Stuttgart’s train station, Hamburg’s concert house and Berlin’s airport, three projects “currently competing to be seen as the country’s most disastrous.”

On Japanese writer Gengoroh Tagame, who creates gay manga work “in the artistic tradition of Pasolini, de Sade, Yukio Mishima and Lolita.”

The battle over safety at chemical plants amidst the death of a worker.