Best New Yorker Articles of 2023

Besides “Hello It’s Me,” his C.V. includes playing in a Bowie tribute band, producing Meat Loaf as a Springsteen parody, and getting drunk with Mrs. Soupy Sales, Nick Paumgarten writes.

Alexis Okeowo writes that tens of thousands of people have disappeared on their way to Europe. Can they be identified?

Rebecca Mead on a new memoir by the Duke of Sussex detailing his relationships with Meghan Markle, Princess Diana, King Charles, Prince William, and Kate Middleton.

Elif Batuman on how to reckon with the ideology of “Anna Karenina,” “Eugene Onegin,” and other beloved books.

As occupied territories are liberated, some residents face accusations that they sided with the enemy, Joshua Yaffa writes.

In his first interview since a near-fatal stabbing, the author talks with David Remnick about the attack, his recovery, and his new novel, “Victory City.”

Rebecca Mead writes about a bravura show at the Rijksmuseum that displays more of the Dutch Master’s work at once than he himself ever saw.

Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country, Nathan Heller writes. What happened?

William Finnegan writes about how the effort to renovate midtown Manhattan’s transit hub has been stalled by money, politics, and disputes about the public good.

A succession battle involving a fight for the patronage of Sarah Jessica Parker threatens to stop the presses at a Greenwich Village newspaper, Zach Helfand writes.

Adam Gopnik pages through “Milton Glaser: Pop,” a new overview of a design revolution, edited by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber.

Rumors destroyed Hazim Nada’s company. Then hackers handed him terabytes of files exposing a covert campaign against him—and the culprit wasn’t a rival but an entire country, David D. Kirkpatrick reports.

“A Strange Loop,” a story about a Black, gay theatre nerd, was a surprise success. In his latest work, “White Girl in Danger,” Jackson reimagines the soap opera, Hilton Als writes.

After the death of a reporter who investigated narcopolitics, her colleagues formed a secret collective to bring the killers to justice—and challenge a culture of impunity, Melissa del Bosque writes.

Drug syndicates and other criminal groups bought into the idea that a new kind of phone network couldn’t be infiltrated by cops. They were wrong—big time. Ed Caesar reports.

As the emirate’s ruler espoused gender equality, four royal women staked their lives on escaping his control, Heidi Blake reports.

The disaster highlighted the corruption and authoritarianism of President Erdoğan, Suzy Hansen writes. Can he finally be defeated?

One of the late, great barman’s best customers, Liam Neeson, presided from a “fecking” sickbed upstairs as drinkers toasted the guy who’d served Jodie Foster, Ralph Fiennes, Bono, Joe Torre, and Bette Davis, Zach Helfand writes.

Anthony Broadwater spent sixteen years in prison and twenty-two more as a registered sex offender, Rachel Aviv writes. For him and for the author of “The Lovely Bones,” justice is a difficult dream.

After a No. 1 hit, “Unholy,” the artist is under pressure to do it again. Kelefa Sanneh writes about her new album, “Feed the Beast.”

Andrew Marantz writes about the independent-state-legislature theory, Trump’s rationale for trying to overturn the 2020 election, which could, in Moore v. Harper, become the law of the land.

Every year in India, many thousands of women are killed in marriage-payment disputes, and tens of millions suffer intimate-partner violence, Manvir Singh writes. Why does this war on women persist?

David Remnick on the life and recent death of Robert Gottlieb, a former editor of The New Yorker and Knopf, who worked closely with Robert Caro.

The President of China compared moral education to fastening buttons on clothes, Peter Hessler writes. The girls’ buttons were wrong from the start, but they learned the more valuable lessons that two systems can impart.

In an era when “pre-awareness” rules Hollywood, the company is ginning up plots for everything from Hot Wheels to UNO, Alex Barasch writes.

A rapid end to burning fossil fuel would arrest the heating that has caused extreme damage in recent weeks; and that rapid end is possible, Bill McKibben writes.

In Southeast Oklahoma, a father-son reporting duo’s series on the county sheriff led to an explosive revelation.

Louis Menand reviews “A Most Tolerant Little Town,” by Rachel Louise Martin, and explores a forgotten civil-rights episode.

From the start, women were at the center of the demonstrations that swept Iran last year, Azadeh Moaveni writes. Schoolgirls emerged as an unexpected source of defiant energy.

Online merchants changed the way we shop—and made “reverse logistics” into a booming new industry, David Owen writes.

Leslie Hamilton, an accountant, battled sea lice and garbage barges as she became the first person on record to swim a lap around Staten Island since 1979, Daniel Shailer writes.

Joseph Mitchell writes about New York’s rats, whose population increased during the Second World War, and speaks to various experts about the creatures’ habits and the difficulties of exterminating them.

The Long Island lawyer Spencer Sheehan has filed lawsuits against Pop-Tarts, Country Crock, and hundreds of other brands, Sarah Larson reports.

Jill Lepore reviews Walter Isaacson’s new book, about a founder of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of the social-media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Scott McAfee, the cello-playing, What-A-Man-pageant-winning judge presiding over Trump’s trial, wants to avoid becoming “the next Judge Ito,” Charles Bethea writes.

As a girl in Austria, Evy Mages was confined to a mysterious institution in Innsbruck. Decades later, she learned why. Margaret Talbot reports.

The conservative Christian group that overturned Roe v. Wade has won fifteen Supreme Court cases. Now it wants religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws. David D. Kirkpatrick reports.

John McPhee writes about his sixty-year friendship with Bill Bradley.

In many states, a new legal strategy called intervention forces birth parents to compete for custody of their children with foster parents seeking to adopt, Eli Hager writes.

Party officials are vanishing, young workers are “lying flat,” and entrepreneurs are fleeing the country. What does China’s inner turmoil mean for the world? Evan Osnos reports.

A profile of Sally Snowman, the keeper of Boston Light, on Little Brewster Island, Massachusetts, and how she is preserving maritime tradition and history. Dorothy Wickenden reports.

Michael Schulman profiles the director of “Alien,” “Blade Runner,” “Gladiator,” and “Thelma & Louise,” who discusses his career and his new movie about the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby.

Joshua Rothman joins Geoffrey Hinton on his island and learns why the neural-network pioneer thinks A.I. systems, like Open AI’s ChatGPT, could grow too smart to remain under our control.

The city’s restaurants, including Frank Pepe’s, Modern, and Sally’s, inspire pilgrimages and intense loyalties. Can their magic be replicated elsewhere?

Jennifer Gonnerman speaks to Kristin Kinkel, whose brother, Kip Kinkel, killed their parents and opened fire at Thurston High School, in Oregon—a shooting that presaged the violence in Columbine, Colorado.

Dominic Sessa had only acted in school plays at Deerfield Academy when Alexander Payne plucked him from twelfth grade to star alongside Paul Giamatti in his “Christmas-blues” film, “The Holdovers,” Michael Schulman writes.

Across the U.S., felony-murder laws hold people responsible for killings they didn’t commit, putting thousands of Americans—disproportionately young and Black—in prison. Sarah Stillman looks at the case of Sadik Baxter.

“Hypercars,” made by such manufacturers as Bugatti and Koenigsegg, can approach or even exceed 300 m.p.h. Often costing millions of dollars, they’re ostentatious trophies—and sublime engines of innovation. Ed Caesar reports from test tracks around the world.