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
What Emily Wilson’s Iliad Misses
Her new translation is inviting to modern readers, but it doesn’t capture the barbaric world of the original.
Love Is Not Always Song, but the Swelling
A poem for Sunday
This Week in Books: History Scares Authoritarians
A new book looks at the “underground historians” of China who are resurfacing moments from the past that authorities would prefer be forgotten.
Chinese Leaders Are Scared of Their Country’s History
A new book explores the Chinese filmmakers, writers, and artists who are trying to uncover a past that the authorities would rather forget.
The Painful Afterlife of a Cruel Policy
Across memoir and fiction, Fae Myenne Ng has explored the true cost of the Chinese Exclusion era.
More Schubert
A poem for Sunday
We Don’t Need Another Antihero
In Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk, the focus on psychology diverts us from the questions we should be asking about the world’s richest man.
This Week in Books: The Rare Novel With a Happy Parent
Loved and Missed shows what child-rearing is really like.
A High-Water Mark in American Mass Culture
Ernie Bushmiller’s long-running comic strip, Nancy, helped establish the way we think visually.
Distressed Haiku
Published in The Atlantic in 2000