Summer Reading Guide
The Atlantic’s writers and editors have picked books to transport you, surprise you, and inspire you.
Where to Turn When You Feel ‘at Odds With Being Human’
Two recent books find, in the fluidity and endurance of marine life, respite from a world that expects conformity.
History Is Never Only One Person’s Story
A good group biography details with curiosity the ways, trivial and tremendous, that humans influence one another.
Considering Roe v. Wade, Letters to the Black Body
A poem for Saturday
Without Choice
A poem consisting of many voices
Empathy Isn’t Enough
The perils and limits of writing with a moral message: Your weekly guide to the best in books
What This Is Going to Hurt Leaves Out
And what the AMC black comedy about a British obstetrician illuminates about women’s health
‘I’ve Seen Several Giants Die on My Land’
A new anthology about climate change acknowledges that we are both willing participants in and at the mercy of the systems that are destroying us.
Black Flamingo
A poem for Wednesday
The Most American Form of Architecture Isn’t Going Anywhere
A new book challenges the dominant narrative that malls are dying.
A Substitution
A short story
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh on the Performance of Fiction
“There’s no one the fiction writer can hide behind.”
Beware the Luxury Beach Resort
These ostensible paradises have a dark side.
The Organization of Your Bookshelves Tells Its Own Story
The complexity of the human heart can be expressed in the arrangement of one’s books.
Byron, Shelley, and Now Zelensky
To appreciate the special power of the Ukrainian president, we need to listen closely to his words, and remember the inspiring poets who came before him.
Where Russia’s Declinist Rage Isn’t Enough
An ex-Soviet state’s national myths—as well as the forces of nationalism, economics, culture, and religion—all pull it away from Moscow. Can Russia really compete?
The Book That Captures My Life as a Dad
Abbott Awaits makes the everyday aspects of parenting objects of tender observation.
The Awkward Intimacy of Therapy
The practice may require vulnerability, but being heard can bring healing: Your weekly guide to the best in books
What If All Men Disappeared and the World Was Just Boring?
A new feminist utopian novel imagines a world without men. The problem is they’re never really gone.
The Book That Never Stops Changing
What I’ve learned about Dublin, and myself, in a lifetime of reading Ulysses
The Books Swallowed by the Black Hole of the Coronavirus
Some spectacular titles had the terrible luck of being released in early 2020. They still deserve our attention.