Forget Grit
Even the luminaries of the self-help genre have begun to recognize how little in life we can actually control.
Books
Introducing The Atlantic’s expanded books coverage: essays, criticism, fiction, poetry, and recommendations from our writers and editors
How American Girl Doll Lost Its Way
At 40, the brand faces a midlife crisis.
Democrats Are Sounding More Like Republicans
Why politicians are betting on ever more moralizing language
Celebrity Has Become a Jobs Program
A new book by the hosts of Who? Weekly scrutinizes how social media democratized fame.
A Forgotten Fix for American Racial Strife
Harold Cruse had a prescient understanding of why social movements stumble—and how they might find more success.
What To Read
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50 Unforgettable Love Stories
Centuries of joyous, tragic, tantalizing, enduring fiction
Six Hard-to-Find Books Worth Reading
These titles are no longer fashionable, if they ever were—but should you manage to read one, you might love it.
What to Read to Wake Up Your Brain
These books can ease readers into a season of work and hard thinking.
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Six Books That Take You to Space
You won’t even have to leave your couch.
Newsletter
The Books Briefing
Our culture editors’ weekly guide to the best in books.
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Fiction
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The Guardians
A short story
Disunion
A short story
I Heard You Singing
A short story
The Wisdom of Holden Caulfield
Beneath all the alienation, The Catcher in the Rye, which turns 75 this year, has a surprisingly hopeful—and ethical—outlook.
Those Books of Smut and Wonder
How Sarah J. Maas became the queen of romantasy
Anne Carson’s View of the Past
The new Nobel laureate invokes ancient history while understanding its inaccessibility.
The Nobel Laureate Who Rescued Me
In my mid-20s, I was flailing. Then I memorized a baffling Anne Carson poem and learned to stop looking so hard.
The Guardians
A short story
Anne Carson’s Seductive Strangeness
The winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature makes ancient texts feel tantalizingly new.
Something Like People
A poem
Zombie Originalism
Samuel Alito’s efforts to revamp the conservative legal philosophy reveal that a new movement is ascendant.
Puffins
A poem
A Mysterious Literary Pattern
Robert Kolker’s The Vanishing Family joins a growing bookshelf of new works focusing on dementia.
What Vienna Lost When It Lost Its Jews
Douglas Smith’s The City Without Jews revisits the decimation of a robust community—and the city that betrayed it.