Editor’s Pick

A 29-year-old combat veteran returns home, then decides to try to walk on as a kicker for Wyoming: “Noble took a job for his uncle’s hay-brokerage company, throwing bales from trucks into the barn lofts of thoroughbred horse farms, sometimes 720 of them a day. He told the stories of walking dusty streets and climbing […]

A writer is stalked by his former M.F.A. student: “Soon after that first volley, Janice (my agent) called, sounding upset. For several days, she had been receiving strange e-mails about me from Nasreen, and she was concerned for her safety. The e-mails contained the same baseless accusations of plagiarism, accompanied by threats of ‘hell to […]

What if there were a flagship McDonald’s store that served all the variations of country-specific fast food items found in chains from around the world? “Everyone talks about how globalization ‘McDonalds-izes’ the world, but the funny thing about a place like New York is that you can get basically every kind of food *except* whatever […]

Victims of child pornography seek restitution, sometimes from hundreds of separate cases: “Marsh researched legal remedies for Amy. Combing through his casebooks, he found a provision in the Violence Against Women Act that he had never heard of before: it gave the victims of sex crimes, including child pornography, the right to restitution or compensation […]

A court orders the release of church files revealing a history of sex abuse by clergy members. The documents back up the allegations of victims, who are finally finding justice: “In recent years, a key part of clergy abuse cases has involved getting confidential files released. The Catholic Church is a meticulous record-keeper. When a […]

How Apple’s voice-recognition software got its start—and how it lost some of its power along the way: “This Siri — the Siri of the past — offers a glimpse at what the Siri of the future may provide, and a blueprint for how a growing wave of artificially intelligent assistants will slot into our lives. […]

[Fiction] Recommended by Joshua Ferris. A man returns to his family farm, starting over: “The moon shone yellow through the trees. It was well past midnight, and Sonny was tired. For some time, he’d had trouble sleeping. He fell asleep quickly, exhausted by a day of cows and cold, only to come awake a few […]

Remembering Aaron Swartz, the programmer and Internet activist who took his own life earlier this year, and what he was fighting for: “Aaron didn’t play that game. After he sold Reddit, he couldn’t be bought. In fact, he was spending his own money, and his valuable time, on campaigns for the public good, and helping […]

A history of America’s military spending: “If any arms manufacturer today holds what Eisenhower called ‘unwarranted influence,’ it is Lockheed Martin. The firm’s contracts with the Pentagon amount to some thirty billion dollars annually, as William D. Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, reports in his […]

Meet the families who have moved from America to West Bank settlements: “In 2010, 269 Jews moved from America to West Bank settlements, many of which are marketed as ‘bedroom communities’ to families and white-collar professionals in the US. The migration is called ‘making aliyah,’ which translates roughly from the Hebrew as ‘movin’ on up.’ […]