South of the Arctic Circle in Canada’s Northwest Territories, 11 tents stand on the tundra. Twin Otter float planes fly in pancake mix, fruit and steaks for 16 men and women living among the caribou and grizzly bears. Most important is...

Last year, Marc Kaye suffered a cash shortage. He had tuition to pay at three colleges — including Harvard and Columbia — and his insurance business wasn’t generating enough commissions to cover the bills. Then Kaye remembered a friend in London...

Gustavo Soler knew he was in trouble. It was 2001, and Soler was union president at a coal mine in Colombia owned by the wealthiest family in Alabama. Soler’s predecessor, Valmore Locarno, and Locarno’s deputy, Victor Orcasita, had been killed seven...

A mile down an unpaved road on the outskirts of Canton, Illinois, population 14,500, stands a shuttered ethanol plant. Some of the farmers who invested in it blame a poker-loving, libertarian math savant named Andy Redleaf....

When the tide rushes into New York Harbor, a strange thing happens at the Gristedes supermarket on Roosevelt Island. The freezers, cash registers—even the red neon “Bagels” sign— hum with electricity from the riptide coursing up the East River....

John Bartelson, who smokes Marlboro Lights through fingers blackened with tractor grease, may look like an average wheat farmer. He isn’t. He’s one of North Dakota’s new oil barons....

Ed Roski is a former U.S. Marine who won two Purple Hearts in Vietnam. He has bicycled across Mongolia and Myanmar and plunged to the wreck of the Titanic in a Russian submersible. He’s No. 128 in line to ride into space on a craft...