Editor’s Pick

David Johnson has sent more than 260 emails to Jay-Z, but has yet to receive a single reply. That may not mean his messages aren’t being read: “‘[Jay] has opened every single one of my emails, even re-opening them to re-read,’ says Johnson. ‘He has clicked on links and had emails open for as long […]

[Not single-page] One year later, the survivors of the 2011 massacre in Norway recount what happened: “At a pub across the street from the courthouse, he is seated at a sidewalk table with Anita, drinking beer and hand-rolling cigarettes. He has sad eyes and stubble and a gold hoop in his ear. On his right […]

[Fiction] A mother and daughter arrive in California: “Our shirts were still sticky and sweet smelling, but the bad, sour side of sweet, when we drove into Los Angeles. My mother had called ahead for reservations at one of the hotels she’d read about, but she said she wouldn’t go there right away. “‘Huh-uh. Look […]

What Estonia can teach us about economic recovery—and how the country’s leaders got into a fight with New York Times columnist Paul Krugnan: “On June 6, in a blog post titled ‘Estonian Rhapsody,’ Krugman took on what he called ‘the poster child for austerity defenders.’ In his post, he graphed real GDP from the height […]

Greg Ousley murdered his parents when he was 14, and is now serving a 60-year sentence. A look at the debate over how we should punish minors for committing violent crimes: “Today there are well more than 2,500 juveniles serving time in adult prisons in the United States — enough, in Indiana’s case, to fill […]

The story of a young chess prodigy’s unraveling and disappearance: “NEW YORKERS DISAPPEAR all the time. A handful leap into the public eye and remain there, like 6-year-old Etan Patz. An even smaller number miraculously return after decades, like Carlina White, stolen as a baby from a Harlem hospital in 1987 and found more than […]

A writer goes through “the most invasive process in politics”—being vetted as a running mate by the same person who vetted Sarah Palin in 2008: “It starts unobtrusively enough. ‘So you’re the vice president, and the president is visiting Seoul,’ Frank begins, unspooling an elaborate scenario in which the president’s hotel gets decimated by a […]

A love letter: “Wednesday, July 18, is the 20th anniversary of our marriage. How can I begin to tell you about Chaz? She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed […]

A trip to an oil boomtown transformed by thousands of young men arriving to find work: “I’d heard Williston was a magical place. A small town where the recession didn’t exist, where you could make six figures driving a truck, and where oil bubbles straight up from the Earth’s Bakken layer like water from an […]

On the fate of Marko Cheseto, the former Kenyan track star who lost his career, his best best friend and his feet at the University of Alaska: “He’s in the first days of his new life. A man who could run farther and faster than almost anybody in the world now sits to shower. He […]