Does a glacier hold the secret of how civilization began—and how it may end?
Best New Yorker Articles of 2002
Explore 46 featured picks from The New Yorker's 2002 issues.
46 picks · 46 issues · Top author: Lawrence Wright (3)
Most featured section: Profiles
Featured Picks
John O’Neill was an F.B.I. agent with an obsession: the growing threat of Al Qaeda.
Lawrence Wright on the future of the Mormon Church.
Short story set in a futuristic, commercial-saturated world about a grandfather taking his grandson to see a musical.
Short story set in Ireland about a mentally disturbed boy who is sent to a reform school after his mother dies and he attempts to kill his father… He is …
James B. Stewart’s 2002 piece on the September 11th hero Rick Rescorla, who died evacuating one of the World Trade Center towers after they were attacked by Al-Qaeda.
An interview with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Signed comment about the evolving Canadian national character and the unusual outcome of the recent Winter Olympics judging scandal... The Canadian pairs …
Patti Smith has been a rock star for more than twenty-five years, in spite of some eccentric career choices.
In the eighties, Swinton became the avant-garde’s Garbo, a manifestation of ideas in the flesh. Hilton Als spoke to the elusive anti-star, in 2002.
Mark Singer on Cooke City, Montana, where “high-marking”—a dangerous snowmobiling sport—is king.
Short story about a woman being picked up by a man in an art gallery and then resisting him in her apartment. Although neither gallery nor artist is named,…
The world is running out of fresh water, and the fight to control it has begun.
How far will the Attorney General go?
NEW YORK JOURNAL about the revival of Harlem and local preservationist Michael Henry Adams author of "Harlem Lost and Found"... . In the pursuit of equal …
A REPORTER AT LARGE about John Pitner, and the militia movement... Writer tells about meeting Pitner for the first time in 1996, about four months before…
From 2002: Michael Specter writes that the man who warned America about AIDS can’t stop fighting hard—and loudly.
Signed comment about the Bush administration’s dismal environmental record... Many of the mountains of West Virginia have no tops. These were "removed," …
The joys and boos of rooting for that other team.
Why the government didn't know what it knew.
Did the prosecutors in the Louima case have the right man all along?
How the Church lost its mission.
Is the Army becoming irrelevant?
After fifteen years and twenty-seven heists, Ray Bowman and Billy Kirkpatrick, who were among the most accomplished bank robbers in United States history, finally tripped up, Alex Kotlowitz reports.
How did Lance Armstrong manage the greatest comeback in sports history?
Malcolm Gladwell questions the correlation between I.Q. and occupational success: “The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it's the other way around.”
Philip Gourevitch writes about going on the road with James Brown.
Serra carries the art of sculpture into new areas, taking great risks and pulling them off, Calvin Tomkins writes.
The great Chicago heat wave, and other unnatural disasters.
Bill Buford’s Profile of Mario Batali, the boisterous chef and restaurateur who became wildly popular by changing the way people think about Italian cooking in America.
Philip Gourevitch on corruption-plagued Providence Mayor Vincent A. (Buddy) Cianci, Jr.
Ian Parker on how Mick Jagger selects fashion pieces for his tours, and which styles the Rolling Stones singer favors for stadium concerts.
How an Egyptian doctor became a master of terror.
Susan Orlean on the campaign to release Keiko, the orca whale that starred in “Free Willy,” into the wild.
Larissa MacFarquhar’s 2002 Profile of the critic and the writer Harold Bloom: “To him, what matters is the essence of personality, and all the rest is dross.”
Oliver Sacks on the mystery of a woman who lost her ability to recognize familiar objects by sight.
How a record store in Paris became a center of African music.
Hezbollah sets up operations in South America and the United States.
Short story about a married woman whose house is broken into while she’s off having an affair. You could compare a certain kind of love affair to a car …
Is the housing market a bubble that’s about to burst?
Short story about a couple and their last evening together; the wife, Marit, has a fatal disease and intends to commit suicide. Before she does, they have…
Alec Wilkinson’s 2002 Profile of the singer, who regards writing songs as the effort to find form for sounds he hears in his head.
What does "Saturday Night Live" have in common with German philosophy?
How the filmmaker Mira Nair makes people see the world her way.
Searching for Bruno Schulz.
Burkhard Bilger writes about Joe Nickell, who is perhaps the country’s foremost paranormal investigator and debunker of false phenomena.