Best New Yorker Articles of 2018

Upon receiving a diagnosis of brain cancer, Eric Sun set out to achieve some lifelong musical goals.

How could Charles Manson and David Cassidy die within two days of each other? It’s as if fate were trying to erase my childhood.

Sarah Stillman on the immigrants in the U.S. who may face violence and murder in their home countries—and what happens when they are forced to return.

Adrian Chen writes about the Nigerian news-satire series “The Other News,” which is modelled on “The Daily Show” and aims to empower viewers to defend democratic principles.

Nick Paumgarten writes about “O.G.,” a movie that tries to capture the hope and despair of inmates’ lives.

Jonathan Blitzer on Jennifer Mendelsohn, who turns the tables on Trump’s anti-immigrant mouthpieces by digging through their genealogical records.

David Grann writes about Henry Worsley’s solitary trek, which became a singular test of character.

Fiction by William Trevor: “She’d been impulsive once upon a time, hasty and not caring that she was. Tups had called her a spur-of-the-moment girl.”

Mike Spies on Marion Hammer’s unique influence over legislators, which has produced laws that dramatically alter long-held American norms.

Jane Mayer on how Christopher Steele, the former M.I.6 spy behind the Trump dossier, tried to warn the world about Trump’s ties to Russia.

The trolls are winning. How do we fix life online without limiting free speech? Andrew Marantz reports.

As the state resists the White House on issues from immigration to climate change, Governor Jerry Brown is determined to avoid a pitched battle. Connie Bruck reports.

Rachel Aviv reports on the disappearances of Hannah Upp.

The space cowboy on finding a home for his four hundred and fifty guitars. John Seabrook writes.

D. T. Max on companies that are using inexpensive immigrant labor to manufacture handbags that bear the coveted “Made in Italy” label.

Canoeing the Rio Grande reveals how life and a landscape would be changed along the border.

A law-enforcement movement that claims to answer only to the Constitution.

Peter Hessler on raising a family during a revolution.

Emily Nussbaum on Ryan Murphy, who, more than any other showrunner, has upended the pieties of modern television.

Evan Osnos on how the Administration’s loyalists are quietly reshaping American governance.

Jon Lee Anderson on John Feeley, the Ambassador to Panama, for whom moral failings at home seemed to compound tactical failings abroad.

A walkout mostly failed to secure more funding for schools, but it has spawned a movement of politically engaged Okies, Rivka Galchen writes.

Rebecca Mead writes that people are flocking to a Nordic archipelago to sample cuisine—like fermented lamb tallow—that challenges even the most adventurous palate.

David Denby on the memoir that captures what it’s like being raised by a man with mythic successes and long-held secrets.

Brooke Jarvis writes about whether a global icon of extinction could still be alive.

The new president of the New York City Transit Authority wants to make the trains (and buses) run on time. It won’t be easy, William Finnegan writes.

Jiayang Fan on how JD.com is expanding its consumer base with drone delivery and local recruits who can exploit villages’ tight-knit social networks.

A debate about the country’s past has revealed sharply divergent views of its future, Elisabeth Zerofsky writes.

Patrick Radden Keefe on Astrid Holleeder, who was the star witness in the murder trial of her mob-boss brother, Willem Holleeder, after secretly recording his confessions.

Nicholas Schmidle writes about the ace pilot risking his life to fulfill Richard Branson’s billion-dollar quest to make commercial space travel a reality.

The head of Elliott Management has developed a uniquely adversarial, and immensely profitable, way of doing business, Sheelah Kolhatkar writes.

Judith Thurman on what hyperpolyglots can teach the rest of us.

Jill Lepore on the history of an obscure Supreme Court ruling that sheds light on the ongoing debate over schooling and immigration.

Evan Osnos on the most famous entrepreneur of his generation, who is facing a public reckoning with the power of Big Tech.

For screen and stage, Mendes works like a sculptor—continually molding and remolding space, speech, and gesture, John Lahr writes.

The owners of an improbably successful restaurant at the gate of a vast wilderness are fighting to keep it unspoiled, Kathryn Schulz writes.

Many facilities are using nostalgic environments as a means of soothing the misery, panic, and rage their residents experience, Larissa MacFarquhar writes.

With a lawsuit against Harvard, Asian-American activists have formed an alliance with a white conservative to change higher education, Hua Hsu writes.

The company has achieved formidable reach by focussing on small markets where its TV stations can have a big influence, Sheelah Kolhatkar writes.

Nicholas Lemann on one of the closest races of the midterms, in which the Missouri senator strategizes to save her seat from a Trump Republican.

Sending a mother to prison can have a devastating effect on her children, Sarah Stillman writes. Why, then, do we lock so many women up?

Atul Gawande on the promise of digitization to make medical care easier and more efficient, and whether screens may be coming between doctors and patients.

Adam Entous and Jon Lee Anderson on the unexplained brain injuries that afflicted dozens of American diplomats and spies stationed in Cuba.

With wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels, large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming uninhabitable, but the fossil-fuel industry continues its assault on the facts, Bill McKibben writes.

Fiction by Jean Stafford, from 1948: “If the sight of someone so peripheral, so uninvolving as Alfred Eisenburg could scare her so badly, what would a cocktail party do?”

Anand Gopal on a Syrian town’s experiment in democracy amid a brutal civil war, through which it fought off the regime and the fundamentalists—and dared to hold an election.

Casey Cep on Harper Lee’s beloved father figure, who became a talking point during the Kavanaugh hearings and is now coming to Broadway.

As part of “stability maintenance,” people the state considers troublemakers may be sent to jail—or sent on vacation, Jianying Zha writes.