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Best New Yorker Articles of 2013

Explore 47 featured picks from The New Yorker's 2013 issues.

47 picks · 47 issues · Top author: David Owen (2)

Most featured section: A Reporter at Large

Featured Picks

The Lost Order
Rivka Galchen · Fiction · January 7

I had not always been a daylight ghost, a layabout, a housewife, a person foiled by the challenge of getting dressed and someone who considered eating less…

The Women
William Trevor · Fiction · January 14

Cecilia caught a single glimpse of the two women and looked away and didn’t look again. Whoever was on afternoon duty would surely ask them what they …

The Psychology of Space
David Owen · Annals of Architecture · January 21

Can a Norwegian firm solve the problems of Times Square?

Bones of Contention
Paige Williams · A Reporter at Large · January 28

Paige Williams on a Florida man’s curious trade in dinosaur fossils from Mongolia.

Dr. Oz, the Operator
Michael Specter · Profiles · February 4

A Profile of the TV doctor and Columbia University cardiologist Dr. Oz, who rose to fame on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show, and, after the article was published, entered politics as a Republican supporter of Donald Trump. Michael Specter reports.

A Loaded Gun
Patrick Radden Keefe · A Reporter at Large · February 11

Patrick Radden Keefe on Amy Bishop, a mass shooter with a tragic past.

After Syria
Dexter Filkins · A Reporter at Large · February 25

If the Assad regime falls, can Hezbollah survive?

Hands Across America
David Owen · Annals of Health · March 4

The rise of Purell.

Heavyweight
Jeffrey Toobin · Profiles · March 11

Jeffrey Toobin’s 2013 Profile of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

About a Boy
Margaret Talbot · A Reporter at Large · March 18

Margaret Talbot writes about transgender youths and about Skylar, a teen-age boy who was born a girl, and had surgery at sixteen in order to transition.

The Miner’s Daughter
William Finnegan · Profiles · March 25

Gina Rinehart is Australia’s richest—and most controversial—billionaire.

Marjorie Lemke
Sarah Braunstein · Fiction · April 1

Marjorie went to 207 every other day. Gabe would be in bed, in sweatpants, a newspaper spread around him. One day, he asked to hold the baby. She liked …

Valentine
Tessa Hadley · Fiction · April 8

Valentine and I looked so consummately right as a couple: stylish, easily intimate, his arm dropped casually across my shoulder, our clasped hands swinging…

Death of a Revolutionary
Susan Faludi · American Chronicles · April 15

The revolutionary author helped to create a new society, Susan Faludi wrote, in 2013. But she couldn’t live in it.

The Martian Chroniclers
Burkhard Bilger · A Reporter at Large · April 22

Burkhard Bilger writes about the enduring allure of Mars, and the Earthlings who theorized about the red planet through the years.

Happiness
Ian Parker · Profiles · April 29

Noah Baumbach’s New Wave.

The Gray Goose
Jonathan Lethem · Fiction · May 6

Forget Rose’s sidewalk speeches, her tirades against the residents of the dead utopia of Sunnyside Gardens, corrupted by the onrush of coming …

The Chaos of the Dice
Raffi Khatchadourian · Profiles · May 13

Raffi Khatchadourian profiles Falafel—real name, Matvey Natanzon—the highest-ranked backgammon player in the world.

The Sense of an Ending
Rebecca Mead · A Reporter at Large · May 20

An Arizona nursing home offers new ways to care for people with dementia.

Change the World
George Packer · A Reporter at Large · May 27

Silicon Valley transfers its slogans—and its money—to the realm of politics.

In the Crosshairs
Nicholas Schmidle · A Reporter at Large · June 3

Nicholas Schmidle writes about the military career and murder of Chris Kyle, a decorated sniper who was shot by a troubled veteran he took under his wing.

Rough Deeds
Annie Proulx · Fiction · June 10

During the next decade, Duquet began to acquire tracts of woodland in Maine. From time to time, Duquet would join Forgeron in the Maine woods to explore …

Stars
Thomas McGuane · Fiction · June 24

Once she’d reached the edge of the meadow, she stopped, unable at first to understand what she was seeing: two figures, proximate and mutually wary, one …

Ed Ruscha’s L.A.
Calvin Tomkins · Profiles · July 1

Calvin Tomkins writes about Ed Ruscha, the Los Angeles-based modern artist who made a name for himself, in the nineteen-sixties, with paintings of words.

Adieu, Doma!
Jeffrey Toobin · Comment · July 8

The Supreme Court’s embrace of gay rights last week had an almost serene majesty. Yet the decision had its roots in something prosaic and largely …

Operation Easter
Julian Rubinstein · A Reporter at Large · July 22

In England and Scotland, investigators from the National Wildlife Crime Unit and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds pursue collectors who illegally steal bird eggs. Some egg thieves have been members of the Jourdain Society.

Slow Ideas
Atul Gawande · Annals of Medicine · July 29

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

Trial by Twitter
Ariel Levy · A Reporter at Large · August 5

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.

Taken
Sarah Stillman · A Reporter at Large · August 12

Sarah Stillman on civil forfeiture, wherein police departments can confiscate money and possessions without charging the owners with a crime.

City of the Lost
David Remnick · Letter from Jordan · August 26

In the world’s second-largest refugee camp, Syrians find that it’s not easy to flee the war.

The Agitator
Samanth Subramanian · Letter from New Delhi · September 2

India’s anti-corruption crusader enters politics.

Varieties of Disturbance
John Lahr · Profiles · September 9

Where do Claire Danes’s volcanic performances come from?

By Fire
Tahar Ben Jelloun · Fiction · September 16

Returning home from the ceremony where he had just buried his father, Mohamed felt as though the burden he carried had become heavier. He had just turned …

Bad Dreams
Tessa Hadley · Fiction · September 23

A child woke up in the dark. She seemed to swim up into consciousness as if to a surface, which she then broke through, looking around with her eyes open. …

The Breeze
Joshua Ferris · Fiction · September 30

“The breeze, God, the breeze! she thought. You get how many like it? Maybe a dozen in a lifetime . . . and already gone, down the block and picking up speed, or dying out. What if she failed to make the most of what remained of this perfect spring day?” A short story by Joshua Ferris.

Mastersinger
Alex Ross · Profiles · October 7

How Joyce DiDonato, of Prairie Village, Kansas, conquered opera.

Katania
Lara Vapnyar · Fiction · October 14

When I was a child, I had a family of doll people. They lived in a red shoebox painted to look like a house, with a dark-brown roof and yellow awnings. …

Private Eyes
Jon Lee Anderson · Letter from Havana · October 21

A crime novelist navigates Cuba’s shifting reality.

Home Movies
Margaret Talbot · Profiles · October 28

Alexander Payne, High Plains auteur.

Bread And Women
Adam Gopnik · Personal History · November 4

Two muses, one loaf.

Anti-Semite And Jew
Anne Applebaum · Letter from Budapest · November 11

The double life of a Hungarian politician.

Thanksgiving in Mongolia
Ariel Levy · Personal History · November 18

Ariel Levy writes about her pregnancy, her journey to Mongolia, and a personal tragedy.

New Old Car
Nick Paumgarten · Repo Dept. · November 25

The woman showed Brooke Shields a picture of a for-sale sign propped up on the back of a maroon two-door 1983 Mercedes SEC. In parentheses were the words …

Mozzarella Story
Calvin Trillin · Our Local Correspondents · December 2

Calvin Trillin on the closure of the family-owned mozzarella shop Joe’s Dairy, in the South Village, and the treasure of ten-stop shopping—“not just for the quality of the goods but for the companionship and the ritual.”

The Interview
Douglas Starr · Dept. of Criminal Justice · December 9

Do police interrogation techniques produce false confessions?

A Very Rare Book
Nicholas Schmidle · A Reporter at Large · December 16

The mystery surrounding a copy of Galileo’s pivotal treatise.

Shopgirls
Katherine Zoepf · Letter from Riyadh · December 23

Katherine Zoepf visits Saudi Arabia’s lingerie stores, and writes about the country’s social shifts as women take jobs as store clerks for the first time.

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