The New York Times Magazine

When Jefferson Alexander Stackhouse was 3 years old, good luck entered his life for the first and maybe the last time. Abandoned as a 2-week-old infant by a… more

In the late 70's, when I was a high school student, you went to summer school if you (a) had failed a class or (b) had absolutely nothing better to do. … more

Perhaps I should start by saying that I have never had a dog I would have wished to replicate. There was Nappy, the poodle-shaped blur of my toddler years. Sweet little Woof, never the brightest bulb in the canine kingdom. Lawrence, the labrador, who barked at suitcases on wheels. My sister's Irish setter, who gathered up the ripest of our unwashed laundry and slept in it. I won't bore you with the… more

To get to the house where Stephen and Megan Scheibner live with their seven children, you skirt past Allentown, Pa., and drive for another half-hour into the hills above the Lehigh Valley. The Scheibner place is on Blue Mountain Road, a few miles past a forlorn establishment called Binnie's Hot Dogs and Family Food. Standing behind their white clapboard farmhouse, where the backyard unfurls over… more

In the summer of 1994, a surgeon named J. Bruce Moseley found himself engaged in an elaborate form of make-believe. Moseley had 10 patients scheduled for an operation intended to relieve the arthritis pain in their knees. The patients were men -- most of them middle-aged, all former military guys -- and they weren't ready to consign themselves to the rocking chair yet. So they had decided to take a risk and volunteer for a study that must have sounded,… more

Early December found me on a cookie-baking spree. I bought a sleek new hand mixer; I clipped recipes for pfeffernuesse and Finnish chestnut fingers, and when the time came, I started rolling out the old family Christmas cookies by the dozen. I was up past midnight, with flour in my hair and colored sugar on the floor and the… more

A couple of weeks ago, the morning after I gave birth to my second child, a particularly garrulous nurse stopped by my room and asked if I had been given an epidural pain block during labor. When I told her I hadn't, she was so instantly approving I half-expected her to slap a gold star on my hospital gown.… more

The illustrations spread out on my desk look like freeze frames from some 1940's melodrama. In one, a man who might be Fred MacMurray, his brow furrowed in a way that strongly suggests limited acting range, turns his back on an elderly woman wearing a martyred expression. In another, a young woman is shadowed by a … more

When it comes to living large on pilfered cash, Martin Frankel -- who is accused of making off with $335 million -- deserves all the attention he has been getting. Here was a guy nervy enough to make a to-do list on which item one was launder money. A guy who secured the use … more

The woman waiting for her abortion is 20 years old, a college student, wan and pretty, with long black hair and glasses. She arrives for her appointment promptly at 10 A.M., neatly dressed in pressed jeans and loafers, but her voice is shaking a little when she signs in at the front desk and her shoulders stay hunched, in what might be shyness or self-protection. She follows the nurse-practitioner into the examining room and lies down without being asked. During… more