The Books Briefing: Overlooked Stories of Black American Life
American history, Black life, and the resilience of memory: Your weekly guide to the best in books
The Dark Fate of Clarice Starling
Across decades of Silence of the Lambs sequels and spin-offs, Hannibal Lecter has become a pop-cultural juggernaut. Starling, not so much.
Amazon Has Transformed the Geography of Wealth and Power
Understanding America in the giant company’s shadow
An Emotional Framework for Understanding the End of the Pandemic
The late philosopher Richard Wollheim can teach many of us valuable lessons about how to face the fear of returning to outside life.
Ghosts in Schools
With lines from In the Wake, by Christina Sharpe
Tom Stoppard’s Double Life
For Britain’s leading postwar playwright, virtuosity and uncertainty go hand in hand.
A Novel That Captures the Allure of the Scam
Chang-rae Lee’s My Year Abroad is a sprawling study of consumption—and how far people are willing to go to satisfy their hunger.
The Books Briefing: Murder, They Wrote
Crime fiction is having a moment right now: Your weekly guide to the best in books
The Library of Possible Futures
Since the release of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock 50 years ago, the allure of speculative nonfiction has remained the same: We all want to know what’s coming next.
The Other Tiger
A poem by Jorge Luis Borges, published in The Atlantic in 1967
The Literary Origins of Netflix’s Latest Smash Hit
Lupin, the French-language series about a charismatic thief, embraces its source material—and then transcends it.
I Stare at a Cormorant
A poem for Sunday
The Books Briefing: Presidential Biographies—And Presidential Mythologies
Books that influence how complicated political figures are remembered: Your weekly guide to the best in books
What Novelists Can Learn From Playwrights
Brontez Purnell on writing fiction from a theater background
Early Retirement
A short story
A Word on Statistics
A poem by Wisława Szymborska, published in The Atlantic in 1997
My Sister Was Disappeared 43 Years Ago
A casualty of Argentina’s so-called Dirty War, Isabel haunted my childhood like a ghost. Then I started searching for her.
The Books Briefing: Humor, Mined From the Absurd
Times are dark. Laughter can provide a respite: Your weekly guide to the best in books
The Cairo Apartments
A poem for Sunday
Discovery
New fiction from Lauren Oyler