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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Fortunes
A short story
The Honor of the Layward Brothers
A short story
We Are Not One
A short story
Diseducators
A short story
A Novel About Women Who Trade One Kind of Captivity for Another
In Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things, a group of captive women discover who they might become beyond the control of men.
‘Intensely Southern and Only Faintly Jewish’
Nicholas Lemann recalls an unusual and sometimes unsettling family history—his own.
What Very Different Places Have in Common
Gary Shteyngart finds the universal in Cape Town.
Sondheim’s Confessions
A recently published book casts doubt on the composer’s insistence that his enduring musicals were never autobiographical.
The Seinfeld Theory of Fiction
Annoying characters let us admit that we might be annoying too.
The Basic Drive That Humans Might Be Losing
In a time of AI sex and looksmaxxing, a new book calls on humans to rediscover intimacy.
The City Where Coetzee Is God
Searching for the Nobel laureate in Cape Town, the city he left behind
A New Direction for the Trans Novel
Jordy Rosenberg’s Night Night Fawn is autofiction told from a sidelong distance.
The College-Educated Working Class
Can a generation of graduates frustrated by their economic prospects change American labor politics?