Articles | Jeffrey Stern

Selected Articles

The Battle of High Hill

THE ATLANTIC

When two megafires converged on a small town in Oregon, the community faced a choice. People could flee, leaving the town to its fate. Or they could stay and fight.

From Arizona to Yemen: The Journey of an American Bomb

NEW YORK TIMES

When a bomb like this explodes, it doesn’t just kill people; it rearranges them.

Alka Pradhan v. Gitmo

NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

The human rights lawyer thinks she has a good defense for her client, one of five accused Sept. 11 plotters imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay — if the government ever actually lets the case go to trial.

The Real-Life Mad Max Who Battled ISIS in a Bulletproof BMW

VANITY FAIR

When Ako Abdulrahman bought a used, bulletproof BMW in 2014, it was the Kurdish soldier’s way of standing out from the crowd, not to mention protecting himself. Two years later—when ISIS invaded Kirkuk and began slaughtering civilians—Abdulrahman and his car made all the difference.

This Former Johns Hopkins Professor Could Be Afghanistan’s Next President

THE NEW REPUBLIC

Ashraf Ghani is an impatient man.

“I have a strange—because there’s no other way probably of describing it—uh, temper,” he says. “I’m a very difficult taskmaster. I don’t wait.”

FINAL DESTINATION

ESQUIRE

They came from opposite sides of the world, but fate brought bomber Jermaine Lindsay and his victim, Attique Sharifi, together on 7 July 2005. One had fled the violence and injustice in his Afghan homeland; the other had been drawn towards it.So how did their lives follow such different paths, yet end in the same horrific moment?

Who killed Alexander Perepilichny?

THE ATLANTIC

On November 10, 2012, Alexander Perepilichny was feeling a little under the weather. He decided to try to shake it off by taking a few laps around the gated community southwest of London where Russian émigrés like him lived in multimillion-dollar mansions alongside members of the English elite.

The $80 Million Fake Bomb-Detector Scam—and the People Behind It

VANITY FAIR

When Baghdad bought tens of millions of dollars’ worth of British-made A.D.E. 651s, advertised as a foolproof bomb detector, the Iraqi government thought it would be saving countless lives.

The Cruel and Unusual Execution of Clayton Lockett

THE ATLANTIC

COVER STORY: The untold story of Oklahoma’s botched lethal injection—and America’s intensifying fight over the death penalty.

Hell in the Hot Zone

VANITY FAIR

Why a Massive International Effort Has Failed to Contain the Ebola Epidemic.

The Ghosts of Kabul

DUKE MAGAZINE

Afghans have strange ways of memorializing their wars. They weave rugs with crudely rendered illustrations of tanks and the twin towers and other hieroglyphs depicting invasions and withdrawals; they put Soviet fighter jets high up on stilts like big tin gargoyles to ornament their airports.

For God and Country

DUKE MAGAZINE

Caught in a moral crisis, a Marine Corps prosecutor drops a high-profile terrorism case-and finds himself a symbol of the ambiguities of the war on terror.

In pursuit of John McCormick

INDY WEEKLY

The missing Chapel Hill attorney never should have gotten away.

The gospel of ‘White Mike’

INDY WEEKLY

A year ago, Mike Kelly was homeless, camping out along Durham’s railroad tracks. Recently, he sat down with Stern to talk about his stay at Phoenix House transitional housing, beating addictions, his new life and his old friends, Mark and Concrete.

The disappearance of a homeless man

INDY WEEKLY

Concrete was ageless and he was an institution; if you were paying attention he was always around, the one thing you could count on. Conceding that his way of living couldn’t be endured for all that much longer, it still didn’t seem feasible for him to not be there anymore.

The Governor's Axe

DUKE MAGAZINE

Donna Arduin ‘85, who “joined government to shrink it,” has shaped state budgets—and political legacies—in Florida and California.

Durham: The Making of an Image

INDY WEEKLY

How crime coverage, an airport and noisy pluralism came to damn Durham in the public eye. And then there's the issue of race.

Home Field Advantage

INDY WEEKLY

The Durham Bulls Youth Athletic League offers kids a lot more than sports and a picture-perfect field—it gives them hope.

When two megafires converged on a small town in Oregon, the community faced a choice. People could flee, leaving the town to its fate. Or they could stay and fight.