Best New Yorker Articles of 2010

Does Whole Foods’ C.E.O. know what’s best for you?

Lauren Collins’s 2010 Profile of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

William Kentridge’s rough magic.

What the leader of the cryonics movement is really preserving.

The rise of Tea Party activism.

Short story about a man from Ventura, California who looks after two women who are convinced they are being stalked by a killer.

Eric Holder and the battle over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Cook and anorexic waitress

Marina Abramović’s performance art.

The President’s failure to connect with ordinary Americans.

What will the Supreme Court be like without its liberal leader?

Jill Lepore writes about the trend of marriage therapy and couples counselling, and examines how the practice started, in 1930, with Paul Popenoe’s marriage clinic.

Did the American conservationists Mark and Delia Owens go too far in Africa?

Man watches himself on TV

The far-flung adventures of a tugboating family.

The battle within the Church of England to allow women to be bishops.

Janet Malcolm on how the counsel for Mazoltuv Borukhova and Mikhail Mallayev, who were tried for the murder of Borukhova’s husband, shaped a dramatic trial.

An entertainment mogul sets his sights on foreign policy.

Nathan Englander’s short story about an Israeli man who explains to his son why he gives an old war comrade who once beat him badly free produce every day.

Evan Osnos profiles the Chinese activist and artist whose criticism of the government puts him at constant risk of going to jail.

William Finnegan writes about La Familia, a drug cartel with a powerful, deadly presence in the Mexican state of Michoacán.

Semiotics students in love

People say no one reads anymore, but I find that’s not the case. Prisoners read. I guess they’re not given much access to computers. A felicitous injustice for me. The nicest reader letters I’ve received—also the only reader letters I’ve received—have come from prisoners. Maybe we’re all prisoners? In our lives, our habits, our relationships?

Short story about a novelist who writes a story about a painting owned by an acquaintance she met at a dinner party.

Steve Carell and the meticulous art of spontaneity.

Is North Korea finally facing collapse?

Karen Russell's story about life on a Florida dredge barge at the height of the Depression.

Atul Gawande explores the difference between standard medical care and hospice for terminal patients.

Alec Wilkinson on the late soul musician Gil Scott-Heron.

Short story, set in an unnamed South American country, about a boy whose older brother goes to live in the United States.

Jane Mayer on Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who pour a great deal of money into Tea Party efforts that attack Obama and environmentalism.

Haiti prepares to elect a President.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the making of 9/11.

Nick Paumgarten writes about Millard Drexler, the C.E.O. of the clothing company J. Crew, and his views on fashion as a business.

George Packer profiles the Israeli novelist David Grossman, whose work and family life have been colored by tragedy.

Why the revolution will not be tweeted.

Malcolm Gladwell on the outsiders who revolutionized the amounts we pay professional baseball players, executives, and other "talent."

Short story about an American woman’s lifelong re-readings of an obscure English novel she discovered in the Costwolds while on a junior year abroad.

The Asian-carp invasion.

Short story about an Asian-American woman and her contentious relationships with her grown children and with her friend, an ailing widow.

Elvis Costello’s boundless career.

Ian Parker profiles Rory Stewart, a British academic and Conservative politician who once walked across Afghanistan.

Short story about a dishwasher whose boss asks him to enter into a green-card marriage.

Short story about an unemployed man who moves back in with his parents and hits a dog while out driving.

How Eli Broad took over Los Angeles.

Short story, set in Mogadishu, Somalia, about an encounter between a young insurgent soldier and an old man.

From 2010: Nick Paumgarten’s Profile of Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind many of Nintendo’s best-known video games, including Mario and Donkey Kong.