On the O.J. Simpson verdict and the Million Man March.

How Paul Ryan remade the Republican Party in his own image.

The rise and fall of Mickey the Pope, the founder of a New York City marijuana delivery business.

On the Calorie Restriction movement, the scientifically-supported belief that the key to a very long life is to eat as little as possible.

An essay on televangelists and a missing mother.

“What could possibly be funnier than depositing a perfectly ridiculous, obviously false, fake cheque?”

On Enrique of Malacca, “the closest thing there is to a hero in the story of Ferdinand Magellan’s horribly botched attempt to circumnavigate the world.”

What one woman spends in a year.

In a posthumously published essay, Twain recounts dreams of a long-lost love.

A profile of “not just the toughest but the most corrupt and abusive sheriff in America.”

How Cosmo, with 64 international editions and a readership that would make it the world’s 16th largest country, conquered the globe.

A look back at the 2008 raid on Warren Jeffs’ polygamous Mormon sect.

Vidal on Midge Decter, homophobia and a proposed alliance between Jews and gays.

Welcome to Plasenzuela, whose 500 inhabitants enjoyed no-show jobs, spent millions on phantom projects and defrauded Social Security.

“Transforming into an Administrative Jekyll for a certain amount of time every day limits the amount of time my Creative Hyde can come up with content to market and sell. Luckily, amphetamines have that problem tackled as well: when you’re using them, you don’t have to sleep… at all.”

When U.S. customs law met abstract art in the form of a bird, “shimmering and soaring toward the ceiling while the lawyers debated whether it was an ‘original sculpture’ or a metal ‘article or ware not specially provided for’ under the 1922 Tariff Act.”

This isn't an essay or simply a woe-is-we narrative about how hard it is to be a black boy in America. This is a lame attempt at remembering the contours of slow death and life in America for one black American teenager under Central Mississippi skies. I wish I could get my Yoda on right now and surmise all this shit into a clean sociopolitical pull-quote that shows supreme knowledge and absolute emotional transformation, but I don't want to lie.

A survey of sex on a Saturday night in New York City.

A profile of the actress and screenwriter.

The frenzied few days before the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer.

How and why did 200 pages of the Aleppo Codex, “the oldest, most complete, most accurate text of the Hebrew Bible,” go missing?

The 1900 death of Fritz and the battle to define his legacy.

An Englishman’s account of the first modern Olympic games.

A trip to a modern African megacity.

A profile of Bruce Springsteen.