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.
Books
Introducing The Atlantic’s expanded books coverage: essays, criticism, fiction, poetry, and recommendations from our writers and editors
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 Does Lena Dunham Want to Tell Us?
Her new memoir captures the cost of being an impossibly popular target.
The Eighth Deadly Sin
Humankind has devised a new form of debasement.
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.
Six Books You Can Get Lost In
These novels highlight the power—both good and bad—of unchecked fantasizing.
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The Books Briefing
Our culture editors’ weekly guide to the best in books.
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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
Jethro’s Corner
A poem for Sunday
A New, Unbearably Honest Kind of Writing
Two authors’ memoirs attempt to communicate intensely isolating experiences to readers.
The Modern Voice of War Writing
In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque reinvented a genre.
What Christopher Hitchens Understood About the Parthenon
The British Museum should return the ancient treasures to Greece for the sake of art, not nationalism.
A Novelist Who Looks Into the Dark
Ali Smith scrambles plotlines, upends characters, and flouts chronology—while telling propulsively readable stories.
Hanif Kureishi’s Relentlessly Revealing Memoir
How a tragic accident helped the author find his rebellious voice again
Why Contemporary Fiction Loves Analog Tech
In Catherine Airey’s new novel, a young person’s curiosity about a life lived without social media or streaming is deployed to superb effect.
In Search of the Book That Would Save Her Life
Sarah Chihaya’s unconventional memoir charts her troubled relationship with the literature that formed her.
The Stranger Things Effect Comes for the Novel
A crop of stories is responding to the fakery of the digital age by embracing the realness of analog objects.