9 Feature Stories We're Reading This Week: The AUMF, The Cannibal Cop And Artisan Toast

This week for BuzzReads, the first Michael Hastings Fellow, Gregory Johnsen, reports on the most dangerous sentence in U.S. history. Read that and these other great stories from BuzzFeed and around the web.

1. 60 Words And A War Without End — BuzzFeed

John Gara for BuzzFeed

Written in the frenzied, emotional days after 9/11, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force was intended to give President Bush the ability to retaliate against whoever orchestrated the attacks. But more than 12 years later, this sentence remains the primary legal justification for nearly every covert operation around the world. Here’s how it came to be. Read it at BuzzFeed.

2. A Dangerous Mind — New York

Stringer . / Reuters / Reuters

Dubbed the "Cannibal Cop" by the media, former New York City police officer Gilberto Valle was arrested and tried for chatting online about planning to kill — and eat — his wife, and others. Robert Kolker asks: What's more disturbing? The things he supposedly planned to do, or that a man could be culpable for what he merely described? Read it at New York.

3. The Writer and the Puzzle — Sports Illustrated

AP / Via sportsillustrated.cnn.com

S.L. Price remembers the late, great Richard Ben Cramer: "in his prime, there seemed no subject or story that Cramer could not crack." He discusses the coincidence that the month the journalist passed away one year ago, the truth about A-Rod, a scoop he'd chased but couldn't break, finally came out. Read it at Sports Illustrated.

4. The Winning Formula — Wired UK

Liam Sharp for Wired UK

A look at how big data has transformed Premier League football: "Each has its own team of performance analysts and data scientists ... They are scientists dissecting the world's most popular game, looking at data from Prozone and other sources to understand what dictates the difference between winning and losing." Read it at Wired UK.

5. The Ghost Of V.C. Andrews — BuzzFeed

Simon & Schuster

At age 56, an unknown, wheelchair-bound writer from Virginia published a gothic teen-horror classic Flowers in the Attic and became a phenomenon. Seven years later, she was dead, yet her name and legacy have lived on in nearly 70 subsequent books. Her family and colleagues tell Kate Arthur the story of her unlikely rise to immortality. Read it at BuzzFeed.

6. Inside Monopoly's Secret War Against the Third Reich — Eurogamer

Via eurogamer.net

An unusual World War II story about how British intelligence and a man who once challenged Harry Houdini schemed to use the beloved American board game to help prisoners of war escape the Nazis. Read it at Eurogamer.

7. A Toast Story — Pacific Standard

Jeff Singer for Pacific Standard

What starts as an investigation into the latest, eyeroll-inducing culinary trend — $4 toast — takes an unexpected turn. Meet the woman and the surprising story behind the fad, Giulietta Carrelli, owner of San Francisco's Trouble Coffee & Coconut Club. Read it at Pacific Standard.

8. What Does Neal Brennan Think White People Need to Know about Black People? — BuzzFeed

Neal Brennan

Sam Graham-Felsen does a Q&A with the co-creator of Chappelle’s Show on the eve of his own Comedy Central stand-up special. “Everyone’s racist, white people just make laws about it — that’s the big difference.” Read it at BuzzFeed.

9. The Fart Party's Over — Narratively

Julia Wertz

A captivating confession about depression and alcoholism that combines prose and comics. Julia Wertz goes deep into her decision to change everything. Read it at Narratively.