Toni Morrison Milton, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison: Books BriefingThe Atlantic - J. Clara ChanAlmost every story has good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, winners and losers. Convention goes that readers are supposed to root for the former, but let’s face it: The “good guys” aren’t always
George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones Is Over. Now What About the Books?The Atlantic - David SimsGeorge R. R. Martin insists that the final entries in his fantasy series are still coming—even though HBO has finished telling his story first. This story contains spoilers for the final season of Game
Books Elizabeth Acevedo on the Future of Young-Adult FictionThe Atlantic - Hannah GiorgisThe National Book Award–winning author writes complex teenage protagonists whose real-life counterparts have long faced literary erasure. he night that Elizabeth Acevedo’s debut novel won the 2018 National
John Okada’s No-No Boy Is a Test of American CharacterThe Atlantic - Karen Tei YamashitaThe re-release of a classic novel about Japanese Americans’ incarceration during World War II is an opportunity to reflect on the nation’s persistent internal conflicts. No-No Boy is a daring book and,
Cupcakes How Americans Became a Nation of SnackersThe Atlantic - Laura ShapiroHow the “food revolution” turned us into snackers, guaranteeing the demise of healthy home cooking I can’t stop thinking about cupcakes. No, not chic ones from the bakery, swathed in caramel buttercream,
Herman Wouk David Means, Julianne Pachico, Steve Coll: Books BriefingThe Atlantic - Rosa Inocencio SmithThe end of May in the United States is a time for memorializing the impact of war—in particular, the sacrifices made by service members and their families. Yet the ultimate costs of war—to individuals,
How the 'Inferno' Helped Jayson Greene Through GriefThe Atlantic - Joe FasslerWhen his 2-year-old daughter died, Jayson Greene turned to writing to survive his grief, and to Dante’s Inferno for words to describe it. By Heart is a series in which authors share and discuss their favorite
Long-form Journalism My Dad Wrote a Porno Is an Ode to Bad SexThe Atlantic - Sophie GilbertHBO’s latest comedy special illuminates the art of terrible erotica. While watching the HBO comedy special My Dad Wrote a Porno recently, I recognized the look on Jamie Morton’s face as he read passages
World War II’s Female Spies and Their SecretsThe Atlantic - Liza MundyAn old-boy operation was transformed by women during World War II, and at last the unsung upstarts are getting their due. Are women useful as spies? If so, in what capacity? Maxwell Knight, an officer
William Shakespeare In Shakespeare’s Life Story, Not All Is True. In Fact, Much Is Invented.The Atlantic - Elizabeth WinklerA new film by Kenneth Branagh is a textbook case of how portraitists of the bard spin a paucity of fact into fairy tale. How do you tell the story of the world’s greatest literary career when the literary
William Shakespeare The Books Briefing: The Bard by Any Other NameThe Atlantic - Rosa Inocencio SmithShakespeare, despite being perhaps the best-known writer in the English language, is a tricky figure to pin down. A new film about the playwright and poet’s life offers just one of many fictional interpretations
J.R.R. Tolkien The J. R. R. Tolkien Story That Makes the Case for Fantasy FictionThe Atlantic - Yosef LindellThe Lord of the Rings author once wrote a short tale about a painter that elegantly argues for the value of escapism in literature. There’s good reason to discuss hobbits again this spring: On Friday,
Trust Exercise Is an Elaborate Trick of a NovelThe Atlantic - Sophie GilbertSusan Choi’s taut, drama-school narrative asks: Where does art end and reality begin? The affair between Sarah and David in Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise begins long before they touch each other. They’re
Writing Raphael Bob-Waksberg on BoJack Horseman and Writing Surreal Love StoriesThe Atlantic - Hannah GiorgisThe writer talks about his debut short-fiction collection, which channels much of the same caustic humor and heartrending dialogue as his Netflix series. Years before the BoJack Horseman creator Raphael
Poetry Remembering a Man Who Had the Thing ItselfThe Atlantic - Cullen MurphyRichard Todd was an editor at The Atlantic in the 1970s and ’80s. He died in April. “If you would seek my monument, look around you”—the words of Christopher Wren’s famous epitaph, laid into the floor
Motherhood The Books Briefing: There’s No One Right Way to Be a MotherThe Atlantic - Tori Latham“Maternity entails its own unsettling journeys,” The Atlantic’s literary editor, Ann Hulbert, wrote earlier this year. It’s a statement that underscores the fact that motherhood can be fraught for many
Neon Neon Is the Ultimate Symbol of the 20th CenturyThe Atlantic - Sarah ArcherThe once-ubiquitous form of lighting was novel when it first emerged in the early 1900s, though it has since come to represent decline. In the summer of 1898, the Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay made
Science Fiction Science Fiction’s Preoccupation With PrivacyThe Atlantic - Lily MeyerTwo ambitious new novels build techno-futures in which surveillance offers disturbing new threats. In a 1975 essay titled “American SF and the Other,” the great science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin
Philip Roth The Books Briefing: The Fault With Our StarsThe Atlantic - Rosa Inocencio SmithFame! To paraphrase David Bowie, it takes over culture and conversations in a way that can be hard to swallow. Back in 1962, the historian Daniel Boorstin worried that Americans’ obsession with celebrities
Long-form Journalism The Lost Art of Deadline WritingThe Atlantic - James ParkerA new anthology of sportswriting celebrates the poetry written in the press box. Bap. That’s how Damon Runyon, reporting on Game 1 of the 1923 World Series, Giants versus Yankees, for the New York American,
John Quincy Adams The Problem With High-Minded PoliticsThe Atlantic - Sean WilentzJohn Adams and John Quincy Adams’s virtuous disdain for partisanship was at the root of their failures. Historians have not yet decided what to make of Donald Trump’s election, although some of us have
The Death of the Pioneer MythThe Atlantic - Jordan KisnerA remarkable novel, Lost Children Archive, and a work of history, The End of the Myth, reckon with a walled border. Lost Children Archive opens as a family prepares for a transnational journey. The man
Art After Sexual AssaultThe Atlantic - Merve EmreSiri Hustvedt’s new novel explores fiction’s role in feminist consciousness-raising. Few things are more excruciating for a writer than confronting the words written by her younger self. Her tone is bound
A Gilded CageThe Atlantic - Ann HulbertA daughter explores the dark secrets of a family legacy. Janny Scott, a former New York Times reporter, has staked her claim to an unusual beat: exploring secret family legacies. She roamed widely in of
The Books Briefing: Money, Money, MoneyThe Atlantic - J. Clara ChanYour weekly guide to the best in books Capitalism, the German sociologist Jens Beckert argues, is based on fantasy: People (and institutions) spend, save, and earn money in hopes of achieving an imagined
The Indelible Awfulness of E. L. James’s The MisterThe Atlantic - Sophie GilbertThe author’s follow-up to her Fifty Shades series is hopelessly retrograde and dismally unentertaining. It is strange, when you pause to think about it, that E. L. James is still out there being glowingly
Writing the Pulitzer-Winning The Overstory Changed Richard Powers’s LifeThe Atlantic - Rosa Inocencio SmithThe author’s 12th novel was inspired by what he’s described as a kind of “religious conversion.” “Writing The Overstory quite literally changed my life, starting with where and how I live,” the author
How to Belong in AmericaThe Atlantic - Hannah GiorgisThe Pulitzer finalist Laila Lalami’s latest novel traces the story of one immigrant family and the seemingly inexplicable tragedy that ruptures it. The Other Americans begins with blood. In the first of
Illustrating the Messy Reality of Life as an Interracial FamilyThe Atlantic - Amal AhmedIn her new graphic memoir, the author Mira Jacob documents conversations about love and race with multiple generations of her family. When the novelist Mira Jacob’s son was 6, he started asking her a of
