‘Intensely Southern and Only Faintly Jewish’
Nicholas Lemann recalls an unusual and sometimes unsettling family history—his own.
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Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Nicholas Lemann; The New York Public Library. The Literary Ecosystem Is Dying
In a sense, the decline of book reviews, like the decline of newspapers themselves, is a story about disaggregation.
Illustration by The Atlantic Texas Sends Plato Back to His Cave
Even in ancient Greece, people worried about philosophy’s subversive effect on tender minds.
Thea Photography / Alamy Reading Is a Vice
Being a reader means cultivating a relationship with the world that, by most standards, can seem pointless and counterproductive.
Illustration by Jackson Gibbs Apocalypse, Constantly
Humans love to imagine their own demise.
Illustration by Paul Spella* The False Narrative of Settler Colonialism
The rise of an academic theory and its obsession with Israel
Kia Rastar / Middle East Images / Getty When Poetry Could Define a Life
The close passing of the poetry critics Marjorie Perloff and Helen Vendler is a moment to recognize the end of an era.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Alan Thomas; Lilian Kemp / Radcliffe College Archive / Harvard University. The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived
A novelist transforms the physicist John von Neumann into a scientific demon.
Illustration by Lola Dupre. Source: IanDagnall Computing / Alamy. The People Cheering for Humanity’s End
A disparate group of thinkers says we should welcome our demise.
Painting by Reynier Llanes. "The Poet," 2021 (oil on canvas, 47 x 36 inches). Who Gets to Claim Kafka?
A court battle between German and Israeli archives over his manuscripts raised literary, not just legal, questions.
Misha Vyrtsev
