Best New Yorker Articles of 2003

Tobias Wolff’s short story about a visit by Robert Frost to a boys’ boarding school full of would-be poets and writers.

A Staten Island man thought he knew an easy way to help the victims of a distant civil war.

Grandfather knows best.

David Grann on Forrest Tucker, a career stickup man who robbed a bank at age seventy-eight.

Larissa MacFarquhar writes on Stanley Coren’s “The Pawprints of History,” which suggests that dogs have been scanted in the historical record.

The C.I.A. and the Pentagon take another look at Al Qaeda and Iraq.

John McPhee writes about his travels across America with a long-haul truck driver who often transports heavy or dangerous cargo.

Kofi Annan’s U.N. has never been more important and more imperilled.

Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?

What happened to German music?

When did Bush decide that he had to fight Saddam?

The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon.

Michael Specter on Ingrid Newkirk, the founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the radical animal-rights organization with a Barnum-like genius for attracting attention.

Signed comment about the conclusion of formal hostilities in the Second Persian Gulf War... It would also require a constricted conscience to declare the …

Short story about a mother who son's best friend goes missing after her own family moves from L.A. to Colorado... Ann Ponders' husband and son had…

Karl Rove is working to get George Bush reëlected, but he has bigger plans.

Short story about a boy who inadvertently allows a dog in his care to be run over.... My parents, Soviet refugees, but Baltic aristocrats took an apartment…

Ken Auletta on the birth of Fox News.

Roy Lee brings Asia to Hollywood, and finds some enemies along the way.

Short story about a man who meets a school friend who reminisces about his high-school girlfriend... I started high school in 1963. But as to whether the …

Lara Vapnyar’s short story about a hesistant teacher called upon to teach a sex-education class at her all-girls high school.

Signed comment about the Sammy Sosa scandal... Sosa, downcast and repentant, has finished serving his seven-day suspension from baseball for corking his …

Laura Hillenbrand on the mysterious sickness that seized control of her life and wouldn’t let go.

Did the Bush Administration burn a useful source on Al Qaeda?

Fiction, from 2003: “My name is Horace Perkins, he thought just as the sun set. My name is Horace Perkins and I worked many a year at the Pentagon.”

Why hydrogen-powered vehicles are attracting some unlikely supporters.

Cynthia Zarin remember her daughter’s terrifying illness.

Short story about a man, Fish, driving out to see his cousin Adam, who has just tried to commit suicide for the seventh time... Thre hours on I-5, a …

Kim Jong Il plays a canny game with South Korea and the U.S.

“Every time I saw him I’d feel the same shock at his likeness to Patrick. And soon something began that I’m shocked to think of now.” A short story by Tessa Hadley.

SHOUTS & MURMURS about 'advances ' in the new 'academic discipline' of "Patriot Studies." The Patriotic Studies discipline concerns the …

Calvin Trillin on the triumphs, travels, and movable feasts of the New York Times’ R. W. Apple, Jr.

Gabriel García Márquez on his early struggles and eventual—and troubling—success.

Every two weeks, on average, someone jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. What makes it such a magnet for the suicidal?

Larissa MacFarquhar’s 2003 profile of Quentin Tarantino. “Tarantino knows the history of movie pleasure better than anybody, he knows what an audience will be expecting and when, and he uses this knowledge to trap and shock.”

From 2003: As an editor, author, and professor, Morrison has fostered a generation of black writers, Hilton Als writes.

“Shattered Glass” and “The Human Stain.”

Short story about a young man who wins a serval, a type of African wild cat, in a bar, and with it almost acquires a girlfriend… The boss had called at …

Fiction by Haruki Murakami: as his vacation winds down, a man becomes intrigued by a mysterious woman and her wheelchair-bound son.

George Packer on the situation in Iraq in 2003, soon after the U.S. invasion.

Yao Ming’s journey from China to the N.B.A., and back.

Short story about a successful screenwriter who’s been placed in a psych ward, and his relationship with another patient, a ballerina who burns …

Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?

George Saunders on the Christmas when he was twenty-six, living in his home town, working in roofing and witnessed a man being cheated out of Christmas.