Is Cohabitation the Feminist Future?
Stories about women living together are proliferating—and offering alternative visions to the nuclear family.
Books
Introducing The Atlantic’s expanded books coverage: essays, criticism, fiction, poetry, and recommendations from our writers and editors
Peter Hujar’s Photos Are All the Rage. He’d Be Shocked.
A new biography brings the late photographer’s relationship with the artist Paul Thek to vivid life.
If You Want a Better World, Act Like You Live in It
We’ve had Henry David Thoreau the environmentalist, the libertarian, the life coach. To understand his influence, think of him first as a dissident.
The Publishing Mystery That No One Wants to Talk About
A minimally speaking autistic man just wrote a best-selling book. Or did he?
The Paradox of Modern Medicine
Testing has become so advanced that doctors now miss important elements of diagnosis.
What To Read
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Eight of the Most Fascinating Biographies to Read
Each is animated by the author’s love—for their subject, for language, and for pushing the boundaries of what the genre can do.
Six Books That Simply Must Be Talked About
These six books demand discussion—with a pal, a date, or a book club.
Nine Books to Reset Your View of the World
Each of these titles will widen your perspective, offering you original insight and vision.
Seven Books to Read When You Have No Time to Read
These titles are worth picking up, even if you have only a moment to spare.
Newsletter
The Books Briefing
Our culture editors’ weekly guide to the best in books.
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Fiction
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Scars
A short story
Fortunes
A short story
The Honor of the Layward Brothers
A short story
We Are Not One
A short story
Inside Frank Bascombe’s Head, Again
Richard Ford’s hero is back.
Six Books That Feel Like Puzzles
These titles represent an eclectic mix of various styles and moods, but any one of them will be exactly right if you want a brainteaser.
The Novelist Who Truly Understood the South
A new collection of Charles Portis’s work makes the case for his place in the American canon.
How Parking Ruined Everything
America has paid a steep price for devoting too much space to storing cars.
A Nobel Laureate Walks Into a Supermarket
Annie Ernaux on the malaise of the grocery store
The Key to America’s Victory in the Second World War
Ernie Pyle understood that the war would be won, or lost, in the realm of steel, dirt, and blood.
Seven Tips From Susan Sontag for Independent Thinking
What would the intellectual powerhouse think about our culture of groupthink and self-righteousness?
Near Darwin
A poem for Wednesday
The Indignity of Grocery Shopping
In her latest work to be translated into English, Annie Ernaux examines the malaise of the modern supermarket.
The Trees Don’t Care About Us
Two new books scrutinize the natural world, and not for what it might offer us.