The New Yorker

Buried Secrets

Patrick Radden Keefe on how Beny Steinmetz, an Israeli billionaire, wrested control of the iron-rich Simandou mountain range in Guinea, in West Africa.

Slow Ideas

Some innovations spread quickly. Atul Gawande asks, How do you share the ones that don’t?

Up All Night

The science of sleeplessness.

Take It or Leave It

From 2013: Zadie Smith writes that every New Yorker has heard a newly arrived British person grumble about tipping.

Trial by Twitter

Ariel Levy on the Steubenville rape case, social media’s role in the investigation, and the online vigilantes who set out to shame the accused.

Now We Are Five

David Sedaris writes about renting a beach house on Emerald Isle, off the coast of North Carolina, with his family, in the weeks after his sister’s death.

Living-Room Leopards

Ariel Levy on how a group of breeders set out to undomesticate the cat.

Reversal of Fortune

A crusading lawyer helped Ecuadorans secure a huge environmental judgment against Chevron. But did he go too far?

The Caging of America

Adam Gopnik examines why the United States incarcerates so many people—at six million, more than were in Stalin’s gulags.

The Lie Factory

Jill Lepore on how politics and advertising merged.

The Throwaways

Sarah Stillman on police departments’ practice of enlisting young offenders as confidential informants, which can place the informants in grave danger.

The Yankee Comandante

A story of love, revolution, and betrayal.

Barack X

Jelani Cobb writes about African-Americans’ perceptions of Barack Obama, the President’s racial balancing act, and the state of black America.

The Case Against Kids

Is procreation immoral?

Scars

A life in injuries.

The Disappeared

Salman Rushdie’s 2012 memoir about the death sentence that forced him into hiding, in 1989.

The Virtues of Daydreaming

According to a recent study, people let their minds wander forty-seven per cent of the time they are awake.

The T-Cell Army

Can the body’s immune response help treat cancer?

Sex And the Superbug

The rise of drug-resistant gonorrhea.

Utopian for Beginners

An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented.