The Untold Story of the World’s Biggest Diamond Heist
Joshua Davis, Wired
“‘I may be a thief and a liar,’ he says in beguiling Italian-accented French. ‘But I am going to tell you a true story.’”

Over Detroit Skies
Roey Rosenblith, Huffington Post
“I was on my third in-flight movie when the screaming started, shattering my tired half-awake travel state. I had gone from watching Up to Inglorious Basterds and had decided to try rounding things off with Land of the Lost. That was when my fellow passenger Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab decided to ignite his explosives 19 rows ahead of me.”

How David Beats Goliath
Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker
“David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time.”

Fatal Distraction
Gene Weingarten, Washington Post
“‘Death by hyperthermia’ is the official designation. When it happens to young children, the facts are often the same: An otherwise loving and attentive parent one day gets busy, or distracted, or upset, or confused by a change in his or her daily routine, and just… forgets a child is in the car.”

The Deepest Dive
Alec Wilkinson, The New Yorker
“Meanwhile, the lungs compress, halving themselves after ten metres, ther reducing by degrees until, by a hundred metres, they are something like the size of a fist; free diving is the only sport in which the lungs shrink and the heart slows.”

Trial By Fire
David Grann, The New Yorker
“There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the ‘execution of a legally and factually innocent person.’”

The Murder of Leo Tolstoy
Elif Batuman, Harper’s
“After his religious rebirth in 1881, Tolstoy changed his practice of ending each diary entry with a plan for the next day, replacing it with the phrase ‘if I am alive.’ It occurred to me that ever since 1881 Tolstoy had always known he would be murdered.”

How I Convinced a Death-Row Murderer Not to Die
Michael Finkel, Esquire
“He asked if I’d be willing to help him formulate a plan to donate his body parts. I said, once I wrapped my mind around the idea, that it was something I could do, but first I needed to clear my conscience. If I was going to help him die, I had to hear the full story of the night his family was killed.”

The Devil at 37,000 Feet
William Langewiesche, Vanity Fair
“What were the odds? There were so many chances for the accident not to occur—so many ways to break the chain that led to it—that a crash investigator later told me it seemed the Devil himself was at play. “

Don’t!
Jonah Lehrer, The New Yorker
“Some cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so that they can’t see the tray. Others start kicking the desk, or tug on their pigtails, or stroke the marshmallow as if it were a tiny stuffed animal.”

Eight Days
James B. Stewart, The New Yorker
“The most important week in American financial history since the Great Depression began at 8 A.M. on a Friday in the middle of September last year.”

The Deadly Choices at Memorial
Sheri Fink, ProPublica and The New York Times
“The smell of death was overpowering the moment a relief worker cracked open one of the hospital chapel’s wooden doors. Inside, more than a dozen bodies lay motionless on low cots and on the ground, shrouded in white sheets.”

Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened
Evan Ratliff, Wired
“The premise is simple: I will try to vanish for a month and start over under a new identity. Wired readers, or whoever else happens upon the chase, will try to find me.”