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.
Subject to The Atlantic's Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions
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
When Making Art Means Leaving the United States
A new book expands the history of the Black Americans who nurtured their creativity overseas.
Over Carolina
A poem for Sunday
Try Listening to Your Literature
Audiobooks are less demanding—and maybe that’s a good thing.
The Night Before I Leave Home
A poem for Wednesday
Tolstoy and Chill
Listening to books is more passive than reading them. That might be a good thing.
Nine Books That Will Actually Make You Laugh
Serious literature is better when it’s funny.
Death of an Avid Reader
Remembering Robert Gottlieb, the editor of Toni Morrison, Robert Caro, and many others, who died last week at 92
A Hamlet for Our Age of Racial Reckoning
A conversation between a leading Shakespeare scholar and this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park director about staging Hamlet in the Atlanta of 2020
The Summer My Father Was a Cowboy
A poem for Sunday
The Powerful Weirdness of Cormac McCarthy
On the death of a singular writer