If you walk into New York’s best restaurants without a reservation, what does it take to get a table?

The poet and his love affair with Italian motorbikes (and also lots of women.)

A blow by blow account of the seizure of a French cruise ship by Somali pirates.

The original story of Christopher McCandless’ fateful trip into the Alaskan wilderness.

Horror-rap’s annual festival draws thousands of clown-makeup wearing Juggalos - devotees of Insane Clown Posse - for a weekend devoted to spraying Faygo soda, rioting, and discussions of the occult.

A Barclays analyst leaves for a routine laser treatment and is never heard from again. Ten months later, authorities find her body under a concrete slab at the house of her doctor, who was in fact not a doctor at all.

A firsthand account of prison’s dysfunctional relationships. The writer wasn’t able to gain access through official channels, so he completed guard training and took a job as a Sing Sing corrections officer.

The bloody, often surreal, fight for Kosovo’s independence was led by a man moonlighting as a roofer in Switzerland.

In the early 1960s, Middle Eastern guys in Brooklyn introduced America to Arabic rock-and-roll.

A day in the political life of Barack Obama.

After two New Jersey homes were robbed of their silver—only their silver—in the same night, the local police got a call from a detective in Greenwich, Connecticut. “I know the guy who’s doing your burglaries.”

A reporter heads to Nauru, a tiny island nation in the Pacific, to track down the hub of a worldwide money-laundering operation—a shack filled with computers, air-conditioners, and little else.

Pat Robertson was 29 years old, possessionless, and living in a Bed-Stuy brownstone when he announced that God had told him to buy a fledgling TV station in Virginia. Here’s what happened next.

David Sedaris on smoking and quitting.

Vignettes of the residents of South Elliot Place.

A day in the life of a Brooklyn laundromat.

Is there really such a thing as brain death?

The shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later culture of the 101st Airborne Division, an execution of captured Iraqi prisoners, and how far up the chain of command responsibility lies.

Inside the bleak world of Joe Francis, the man behind the “Girls Gone Wild” franchise.

The complex, highly evolved world of Moscow’s subway-riding stray dogs.

Race relations at the gigantic and soul-crushing Smithfield slaughterhouse, where annual turnover is 100 percent: 5,000 people are hired, 5,000 quit.

April Savino, a teenage homeless runaway, lived in Grand Central Terminal from 1984 until 1987 when she committed suicide on the steps of a nearby church.

Night raids by the “Hash Monster” and other perils facing American soldiers at a remote base in the wilderness of the Paktya Province as they attempt to turn over power to the Afghan Army.

Argentina’s Lio Messi, the best soccer player on the planet, stands all of 5’7” and needed growth-hormone injections to get there.

The nation watched live as Robert O’Donnell rescued Baby Jessica from that well in Texas in October, 1987. Then they stopped watching, and Robert O’Donnell was lost without the attention.