The Escapist
P. G. Wodehouse’s comic gift was built on his brilliant capacity for repressing unpleasantness.
P. G. Wodehouse’s comic gift was built on his brilliant capacity for repressing unpleasantness.
“The exam went off without a hitch, and from there, stopping just didn’t make sense. Before each Calc test, we convened at Jill’s house to work out the answers.”
Don’t cry for the former Fox star—he’s building a 24/7 media empire in his loopy image.
The sound of water in the air cools even summer sunlight, as though the upland pasture remembers oceans at this height when even dirt and rocks were young (warm-blooded life had just begun). The breeze plays leaves in sweetest treble and never tires of its long fable, in counterpoint…
Fierce, cocky, and built for stardom, Marlen Esparza prepares to fight for the gold at this summer’s Olympic debut of women’s boxing.
Charting the new globe-trotting science of moviemaking
When they leathered his arm to the armrest and began like manicurists in a nail salon he says that he “retreated” from his hand until the part of him that dwelt there once was gone and heard no news from his own outer reaches. In his memoir of those years, he sketches the tricks…
I love my cabin and my writing table, my bright lunch pail, the mudded path. Then drinks begin, say, five-ish—Stoli or Red Label— and keep on till we’ve worked out all the kinks in our disheveled psyches. Back at home, it’s hard how people don’t know I’m an…
Richard Diebenkorn’s vision of California; Sir Walter Raleigh gets his due; stylish ghost stories; and more
Dwight Macdonald shows us that only a great writer can be a great critic.
Why the latest hyped-up work of staggering genius fizzles
How the comedian Louis C.K. became America’s unlikely conscience
Learning to free dive off Hawaii’s Kona Coast takes iron lungs and steely nerves.
Intense, emotional, and frequently out of control, the hip-hop superstar Kanye West allowed his antics to turn him into a national joke and to earn him the criticism of two American presidents. Would a massive concert tour with his friend and rival Jay-Z offer the troubled rapper a taste of…
Never mind that they’re now among the most lucrative forms of entertainment in America, video games are juvenile, silly, and intellectually lazy. At least that’s what Jonathan Blow thinks. But the game industry’s harshest critic is also its most cerebral developer, a maverick bent…
I wanted to be one of his props, a thing that made the sound of other things—an umbrella pushed open and closed: birds’ wings. A coconut shell, one half in each of his hands—galloping, galloping. I set up his microphone stands and he made the crackle of…
The complexities and conundrums of reading Philip Roth’s work as autobiography
HBO’s Game of Thrones, based on the novels by George R. R. Martin, represents a triumph of storytelling.
How nightlife changed Western culture, plus why New Zealand is better than the U.S.
How brand-management theory persuaded a college star to put off the NBA
Browse back issues of The Atlantic that have appeared on the Web. From September 1995 to the present, the archive is essentially complete, with the exception of a few articles, the online rights to which are held exclusively by the authors.
See All Back Issues: September 1995
News Corp. Braces for 500 Phone-Hacking Legal Claims
What's Tanking the Economy
Bloomberg: 'Just Before You Die, Remember You Got Three Extra Years'
Rethinking the Economics of Traffic Congestion
America's Economic Rebound
How to Handle a City of Tourists
The Speed of Light 
Alter Ego 
Synthetic Biology 
