The Classics Everyone Should Read Today
To build a better world in the age of AI, students need grounding in indispensable ideas.
Fiction
Books
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The Toll
A poem
He Was Hugely Influential. He Also Had a Foolish Streak.
A recent biography of the writer John Berger reminds us about his hefty influence—and how he could be blinkered by his convictions.
An Adaptation That’s Both ‘Excellent’ and ‘Bizarre’
Lincoln in the Bardo is a bold novel that has rightfully inspired inventive adaptations.
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.
The Case of George Dedlow
An absurdist short story about a Union doctor—which many Atlantic readers erroneously believed at the time to be nonfiction.
The Brothers
Set in a wartime hospital, a short story about a family with a poisonous secret
The Story of a Year
A young couple is parted by Civil War in an early short story by the 21-year-old Henry James
The Last Copy
As soon as his book was published, Antonio realized that the pure vision of him that only she harbored would be shattered— and that he would do anything to keep her from reading it.
Little Sister
Marla had felt she’d never really had a sister, that she’d been visited by some strange goblin or ghost. But then she went into Daddy’s bank vault after he died.
Vigil
The old Bohemian hadn’t come to disturb the family on Holy Night, only to deliver an enormous, misshapen gift.
How to Win an Unwinnable War
His parents were separating, but all Sam could think about was preparing for nuclear holocaust.
Scars
“I don’t want any more surgeries. I just want a little art to help, to make it look a little less deformed. You know?”
The Great Zero
All this—the dust, the tarantulas, the deaths—had not come naturally. “We’ve used the land wrong,” I once heard a farmer say while I spied on my father and his Communist friends.
Someone I’d Like You to Meet
Veblen’s first desire had been to spring the news of her engagement on her mother. Nothing with her mother was ever simple and straightforward— and that was the thrill of it.