What the Gig Economy Does to a Human
In an age of precarious labor, not every life amounts to a satisfying story.
A Redacted Past Slowly Emerges
This year’s winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, Justin Torres’s Blackouts is a complex story about recovering the history of erased and ignored gay lives.
When Milton Friedman Ran the Show
The economist’s free-market ideas, once a reigning consensus, have been marginalized—yet have also left a disconcerting mark.
The Confederate General Whom All the Other Confederates Hated
James Longstreet became a champion of Reconstruction. Why?
How John F. Kennedy Fell for the Lost Cause
And the grandmother who wouldn’t let him get away with it
Safe Room
A Nonfiction Writer’s Biggest Challenge
To explain how the world works, authors have to break down complicated systems—without being boring.
Younger Than War
The Baffling Cruelty of Alfred Hitchcock
A new book examines why the director was so stringent with—and sometimes even sadistic toward—his female leads.
The Unabashed Jewishness of Barbra Streisand
In her new memoir, Streisand describes the risks involved in making Yentl.
Eight Books That Explain How the World Works
Technologies such as skyscrapers, airplanes, and sewage systems are fundamental—and confusing. These titles explain how they actually work.
Tick Season
A poem for Sunday
A Book That Was Like Putting on ‘a New Set of Glasses’
I consider its argument almost every day.
Do You Have Free Will?
A new book by Robert Sapolsky argues that we’re not in control of or responsible for the decisions we make.
The Heart
A poem for Wednesday
The Tech That’s Radically Reimagining the Public Sphere
In her new book about facial recognition, Kashmir Hill shows how our expectations of privacy have been rewritten over the past few years.
Six Books That Will Scare You—And Make You Think
Black writers have long used science fiction, fantasy, and horror to dramatize the terrors of racism or to tell frightening tales.
Who Made the Oxford English Dictionary?
A new book gives life to one of the world’s greatest crowdsourcing efforts.
A Greek Statue
Published in The Atlantic in 2007
Stop Doomscrolling About Israel and Palestine—Read These Books Instead
The Atlantic’s books editor prescribes these titles as antidotes to the quick and dirty ways people are communicating on social media.
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