Is Cohabitation the Feminist Future?
Stories about women living together are proliferating—and offering alternative visions to the nuclear family.
Books
Introducing The Atlantic’s expanded books coverage: essays, criticism, fiction, poetry, and recommendations from our writers and editors
Peter Hujar’s Photos Are All the Rage. He’d Be Shocked.
A new biography brings the late photographer’s relationship with the artist Paul Thek to vivid life.
If You Want a Better World, Act Like You Live in It
We’ve had Henry David Thoreau the environmentalist, the libertarian, the life coach. To understand his influence, think of him first as a dissident.
The Publishing Mystery That No One Wants to Talk About
A minimally speaking autistic man just wrote a best-selling book. Or did he?
The Paradox of Modern Medicine
Testing has become so advanced that doctors now miss important elements of diagnosis.
What To Read
See All
Eight of the Most Fascinating Biographies to Read
Each is animated by the author’s love—for their subject, for language, and for pushing the boundaries of what the genre can do.
Six Books That Simply Must Be Talked About
These six books demand discussion—with a pal, a date, or a book club.
Nine Books to Reset Your View of the World
Each of these titles will widen your perspective, offering you original insight and vision.
Seven Books to Read When You Have No Time to Read
These titles are worth picking up, even if you have only a moment to spare.
Newsletter
The Books Briefing
Our culture editors’ weekly guide to the best in books.
Subject to The Atlantic's Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions
Fiction
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Scars
A short story
Fortunes
A short story
The Honor of the Layward Brothers
A short story
We Are Not One
A short story
Olivia Nuzzi’s Tell-Nothing Memoir
Can American Canto turn scandal into literature?
What History’s Fallen Societies Have in Common
A new book argues that civilizations built on centralized wealth and power contain the seeds of their own destruction.
The Long History of the Hamnet Myth
The belief that his son’s death inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet is itself inspired by an enduring, compelling, and highly questionable theory.
The Eloquence
A poem
The Germans Who Stood Up to Hitler
And the Germans who didn’t
The Great Mystery of Drumming
It’s about the flow of Time, not just keeping the beat.
The Culture War Comes to the Kitchen
How the politics of food brought together the crunchy left and the trad right
What Sam Shepard Couldn’t Outrun
The actor, playwright, and self-made cowboy was also a poet of masculine angst.
An Anatomy of the MAGA Mind
Under Trump, post-liberal intellectuals have abandoned tradition for radicalism and scholarship for vulgarity.
This Beautiful Confusion
A poem