When Anne Sinclair reacted with equanimity to her husband’s history of philandering, many women wondered if she was for real. Can sexual betrayal actually be painless?

When Barack Obama met Genevieve Cook in 1983 at a Christmas party in New York’s East Village, it was the start of his most serious romance yet. But as the 22-year-old Columbia grad began to shape his future, he was also struggling with his identity: American or international? Black or white? Drawing on conversations with both Cook and the president, David Maraniss has the untold story of the couple’s time together.

The Quidditch World Cup sounds dorky, and make no mistake: it is. But these sorcery-loving Harry Potter fans play pretty rough, as Eric Hansen found out when he captained a bad-news team of ex-athletes, ultimate Frisbee studs, slobs, drunks, and some people he knows from Iceland. Brooms up, and may the best Muggles win.

The op-ed heard round the world—Greg Smith’s scathing New York Times attack on Goldman Sachs, his employer of nearly 12 years—dealt another blow to the firm’s reeling reputation. Now the questions are louder than ever: Will C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein have to go? Who might succeed him? And does it matter?

When Don Waters finally read the unpublished memoir given to him by his late father—an absentee figure he grew up resenting—he was shocked to learn that the old man hung with Greg Noll during surfing’s golden age in California. Sounds like grounds for a quest.

While the glory of her voice propelled Whitney Houston into the pop stratosphere, her demons kept dragging her down, a powerful undertow of drugs and toxic relationships. Following her death in a Beverly Hilton bathtub, Mark Seal investigates Houston’s final days: the prayers and the parties, the Hollywood con artist on the scene, and the message she left behind.

The space-weather forecast for the next few years: solar storms, with a chance of catastrophic blackouts on Earth. Are we prepared?

Isolated Socotra, 220 miles from mainland Yemen, is home to a panoply of strange plants and animals uniquely adapted to the hot, harsh, windswept island.

Fifteen years after the handover to mainland China, Hong Kong residents worry that their identity—and their freedoms—are slipping away.

When London threw its name into the hat for the 2012 Olympics, many had doubts. Not former sport minister Tessa Jowell. Interviewing Tony Blair, Ken Livingstone, and others Jowell recruited to her cause, Michael Joseph Gross details the grueling, often farcical campaign that won the city its prize—plus a $14.5 billion tab.