Best New Yorker Articles of 2017

The Mosul Dam is failing. A breach would cause a colossal wave that could kill as many as a million and a half people.

Growing crops in the city, without soil or natural light.

Rachel Aviv on the story of Albert Woodfox, who, as one of the Angola 3, was in solitary confinement longer than any other American.

We devote vast resources to intensive, one-off procedures, while starving the kind of steady, intimate care that often helps people more.

Adrian Chen writes that Troemel’s online work is a jab at the rigid rules of the art world and an experiment in what art might look like if those rules didn’t exist.

On went his sharpest three-piece, the Saxony tweed, followed by the double monk straps, in burnished caramel, which Michael knew would trigger a coo from dear old Mom. Her stylish son. So handsome. A throwback from her side of the family, those oh-so-attractive Pfeiffers, with their thick manes

The début of New York’s newest train line took place at noon on New Year’s Day—ninety-seven years after it was first conceived.

Lauren Collins on the more than a hundred thousand minors, mostly from Syria and Afghanistan, who have travelled unaccompanied across continents in search of asylum in Europe.

Evan Osnos, David Remnick, and Joshua Yaffa on what lay behind Russia’s interference in the 2016 Presidential election—and what lies ahead.

Jake Halpern on a safe house in Buffalo where asylum seekers from around the world prepare to flee the U.S. for Canada.

Andrew Marantz on how Sean Spicer, Donald Trump’s press secretary, dismisses the mainstream media while giving preference to far-right journalists.

Michael Schulman on Lynn Nottage’s play “Sweat,” a tough yet empathetic portrait of the America that came undone.

Rachel Aviv on the hundreds of refugee children in Sweden who have fallen unconscious after learning that their families will be expelled from the country.

Ben Taub on the thousands of teen-age refugees from Benin City, Nigeria, who risk death and endure forced labor and sex work on the long route to Europe.

She was an architect of the civil-rights struggle—and the women’s movement. Why haven’t you heard of her?

The founder of a popular South Carolina barbecue restaurant was a white supremacist. Now that his children have taken over, is it O.K. to eat there?

His films are illuminated by what he saw when France was ruled by oppression and ordinary people had to decide what, or whom, they would obey.

Evan Osnos on what it would take to cut short Donald Trump’s Presidency.

Many liberals have embraced the sharing economy. But can they survive it? Nathan Heller writes about the viability of the modern gig economy.

A brutal custody battle between two women raises questions about who has a right to rear a child—and could redefine the legal meaning of family.

The former Marine Corps general spent four decades on the front lines. How will he lead the Department of Defense?

West Virginia has the highest overdose death rate in the country. Locals are fighting to save their neighbors—and their towns—from destruction.

Rachel Aviv writes about convicted murderers who have been exonerated by DNA evidence but still remember crimes they didn’t commit.

Jennifer Gonnerman on the Brooklyn neighborhood of Little Pakistan, and on life for the community’s immigrants under the Donald Trump Administration.

The stories of those who survived detention and torture and are now living undercover in Putin’s Russia.

With right-wing zealots taking over the legislature even as the state’s demographics shift leftward, Texas has become the nation’s bellwether.

My cousin became a convicted felon in his teens. I tried to make sure he got a second chance. What went wrong?

Sam Knight on how London’s first Muslim mayor is trying to protect his city’s future.

In family court, judges must decide whether the risks at home outweigh the risks of separating a family.

Z. had emptied half the carton of juice, and now I was holding it as he poured the vodka into the plastic funnel at the top. We had laughed at the way he threw his head back and drank, sucking the juice down even as he grimaced at the taste, which was sickly sweet. He

In the follow-up to her breakthrough experimental album, is Annie Clark making a grab for pop success?

Even in a fractious era, the filmmaker still believes that his documentaries can bring every viewer in.

Bobby Hadid joined the N.Y.P.D. after 9/11, to protect his new country. But when he questioned the force’s tactics, his life began to erode.

“What if this is the last day that she recalls anything? What if she never recognizes anyone again?”

The pair on touring together and on their new album, “Everybody Knows.” It’s a collaboration fifty years in the making.

The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya reveals what the world didn’t understand about Aung San Suu Kyi.

Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it.

Will Donald Trump let the Secretary of State do his job?

Trump’s critics yearn for his exit. But Mike Pence, the corporate right’s inside man, poses his own risks.

Patrick Radden Keefe on how the Sackler family and its firm, Purdue Pharma, ruthlessly marketed painkillers to generate billions of dollars—and millions of opioid addicts.

Kelefa Sanneh on Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic representative from Hawaii—a charismatic and unorthodox politician, an Iraq veteran, and the first Hindu in Congress.

In dozens of criminal trials, prosecutors have put the same gun in the hands of more than one defendant.

Sheelah Kolhatkar writes about how women in the tech world, which is notorious for its gender discrimination, are pushing for change.

When the authorities could no longer be trusted, Nestora Salgado organized a citizens’ police force. Did she go too far?

Thomas Chatterton Williams on the European thinkers behind the white-nationalist rallying cry heard at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Inside Eva Moskowitz’s quest to combine rigid discipline with a progressive curriculum.

Its government is virtual, borderless, blockchained, and secure. Has this tiny post-Soviet nation found the way of the future?