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.
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
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 Does the Literature of the Working Class Look Like?
A new entrant to the genre of workplace literature argues that even mundane labor shapes your identity.
Mario Vargas Llosa’s Question for the Trump Era
The Nobel Prize–winning novelist, who died this week, traveled through both literature and politics with a heedlessness you had to admire.
The Dark Weirdness of R. Crumb
The illustrator dredged the depths of his own subconscious—and tapped into something collectively screwy in America.
Who Are We, Really?
A new subgenre of literature explores what’s uncovered when you take away someone’s public-facing persona.
A Love-Hate Letter to Technology
Vauhini Vara’s new memoir critiques the web in a novel way, turning its products into a kind of poetry.
The Comic-Book Artist Who Mastered Space and Time
Jules Feiffer, who died in January, taught me many things, but one comic strip mattered most of all.
The New King of Tech
How Jensen Huang built Nvidia into a nearly $3 trillion business
What’s Next for America’s Largest Creative-Writing Conference
Trump’s executive orders have made it downstream to authors.