Longform

America, China, and the case for coal as a vital weapon in the war against climate change.

On the religious revival underway in China.

Adapting from his book The Gun, Chivers traces how the design and proliferation of small arms, originating from both the Pentagon and the Russian army, rerouted the 20th century.

Notes on a summer spent aboard an industrial fishing boat off the Alaskan coast.

What happens when a decades old video, featuring the artist Larry Rivers’ prepubescent daughters bare-chested, is claimed both as child pornography and as an important part of the archive of a major American painter.

“You can treat a lot of people, and India has,’’ says an epidemiologist working on TB. “But if you have tests that cause misdiagnosis on a massive scale you are going to have a serious problem. And they do.”

A profile of of Courtney Love.

The macabre, ultra-violent plays put on at the Grand Guignol defined an era in Paris, attracting foreign tourists, aristocrats, and celebrities. Goering and Patton saw plays there in the same year. But the carnage of WWII ultimately undermined the shock of Guignol’s brutality, and audiences disappeared.

In the feral communities of Russia’s Far East, tiger poaching is among the few lucrative pursuits. This is the story of a tiger who fought back.

The difference between a social network and a movie about a social network, and what it says about the Facebook generation.

A profile of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, published at the height of the controversy.

Anxiety, weight, general well-being—how the first nine months determine the rest of your life.

The perpetually underpaid author takes a moonlighting job with Demand Media, publisher of search-engine optimized articles with titles like “Hair Styles for Women Over 50 With Glasses”, absurdity ensues.

The young Woody Allen writes jokes for supper club comedians, decides he will never make it as a performer and then does, idolizes and is snubbed by Mort Sahl, and develops the comic persona which will make him a star.

Returning to the scenes of three famous deaths in Seattle.

The article that spawned a school of thought; an elegy for the age of the megahit and a primer for the niche-based future.

If Annie Leibovitz sold her work through the traditional channels of the art world, she would have amassed a small fortune. But at the tail end of a career that has snubbed art galleries and collectors, she is destitute.

Part two of the history of the Educational Testing Service.

The first article in a two-part history of the Educational Testing Service, the institution behind the SAT.

Yes, 311 helped solve the mysterious case of the maple syrup smell. But with the data from more than 100 million calls, it’s primed to explain far more.

A critique of Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for ‘Superman’.

On Ayn Rand becoming a cult hero to Wall Street insiders and others items that make Matt Taibbi angry.

When a boulder shifts and pins his hand, a climber on a solo trip is forced to do the unthinkable: amputate his own arm. A first-person account of the six-day ordeal, excerpted from Ralston’s Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Russia has ended its death penalty, leaving in its place five prison “colonies” to house its most hardened criminals, nicknamed “The White Swan”, “The Black Dolphin”, “The Vologda Coin”, “The Village of Harps”. Inside “The Black Eagle.”

Requiem for a viral hit.