When Walking, I Keep My Eyes Straight Ahead
A poem for Wednesday
The Long Unraveling of the Republican Party
Three books explore a history of fractious extremism that predates Donald Trump.
Why I Needed To
A poem for Sunday
Tearing Down the Myth of Paul Gauguin
Daisy Lafarge’s new novel makes it impossible to separate the art from the artist.
The Boundaries a Romance Novel Can Break
A subversive love story is a great antidote to a stunted imagination: Your weekly guide to the best in books
The Books That Help Me Raise Children in a Broken World
How can we manage to pass along anything other than rage and despair in turbulent times?
The Strange Audacity of Faking a Big Life Moment
In Diary of a Void, an impulsive decision grows into a personal rebellion against society.
Museum
A poem for Sunday
What a Biography Really Reveals
Even when a writer and her subject never meet, excavating a life can uncover hidden truths: Your weekly guide to the best in books
Seven Books Where the Setting Exposes the Characters
Unchanging environments are a useful narrative tool to show readers just how much a protagonist has grown.
Rushdie’s Challenge to Islamic Orthodoxy
For one young Iraqi man, discovering the writer’s work opened up a world beyond his closed society.
The Atlantic Presents: Shorter Stories
Fiction is often described as a mirror through which we see the world. What happens when a shard of glass must tell the entire story?
Privacy
A poem for Sunday
Eight Books That Will Lead You Down a Rabbit Hole
Making any kind of art can be an obsessive pursuit, but literature is uniquely suited to depicting monomania.
A New Way to Think About Our Filing Systems
How we organize things affects more than just where they are: Your weekly guide to the best in books
Don’t Judge I’m Glad My Mom Died by Its Title
The actor Jennette McCurdy’s memoir is a confessional feat that asks what, if anything, adult children owe an abusive parent.
What We Gain From a Good-Enough Life
A new book challenges us to abandon greatness in favor of more attainable goals.
Paul Manafort Is Back
It isn’t pretty.
Free Speech Can’t Survive as an Abstraction
People must be willing to defend it.
The Unlovable, Irresistible John Donne
The Elizabethan poet was a mystic in bed and a mystic in the pulpit.