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
The Danger of a Too-Open Mind
Perhaps being persuadable is overrated—at least if it means “coming to accept the unacceptable.”
What Shakespeare Got Right About PTSD
A new production of Othello foregrounds what the play’s earliest audiences recognized: the psychological costs of war.
The Life of the Mind Can Only Get You So Far
Michelle de Kretser’s intellectual coming-of-age explores the fissures between one’s ideals and reality.
It’s Hard to Change Your Mind. A New Book Asks If You Should Even Try.
The novelist Julian Barnes doubts that we can ever really overcome our fixed beliefs. He should keep an open mind.
Coalescence
A poem
The Last Great Yiddish Novel
Chaim Grade’s Sons and Daughters rescues a destroyed world.
The Rise of the Brown v. Board of Education Skeptics
Why some mainstream Black intellectuals are giving up on the landmark decision
The Literature of the Pandemic
Half a decade on, we now have at least a small body of work that takes on COVID.
An All-Female Society, Pushed to Extremes
Novels about women’s communities tend toward utopian coexistence or ruthless backbiting. The Unworthy does something more interesting.
An Unabashedly Intellectual Murder Mystery
Cristina Rivera Garza’s newly translated novel evokes a mixture of numbness and anxiety in the face of incessant violence.