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Celina Pereira Jefferson’s Doomed Educational Experiment
The University of Virginia was supposed to transform a slave-owning generation, but it failed.
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Star Tribune / Getty Margaret Atwood Bears Witness
Over the course of her writing career, she has explored the power and limits of personal testimony in times of crisis.
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Columbia University Press The 19th-Century Feminist Novel Pushed Out of the Russian Canon
Karolina Pavlova’s A Double Life examines internalized oppression—and insists on the independence of the unconscious mind.
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Illustration: Arsh Raziuddin; LIbrary of Congress / Getty Thomas Edison’s Greatest Invention
It wasn’t the light bulb or the phonograph or the moving picture—or anything tangible. It was a way of thinking about technology.
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Chloe Cushman Ways of Being
Three new books explore the variety of transgender experiences.
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Celeste Sloman / The New York Times / ... Debbie Harry Stares Back
The Blondie singer’s memoir, Face It, wryly recounts making the most of being ogled.
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Bloomsbury Deborah Levy’s Disorienting, Captivating Fiction
The British novelist’s wry books veer from concrete realism to fractured blends of dream and memory.
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BenBella Books Neil Young’s Boring, Prophetic Message to Readers
The musician wrote his new book, To Feel the Music, the same way he makes records—according to a highly evolved aesthetic of half-assedness.
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Anthony Gerace Misunderstanding Susan Sontag
Her beauty and celebrity eclipse the real source of her allure—her commitment to aesthetic self-discipline.
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duncan1890 / Getty Rewriting the ‘Boy Genius’
Caitlin Horrocks’s debut novel builds on a rich tradition of women writers who complicate the myth of male virtuosity until it crumbles.
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Alexandra Bowman Edna O’Brien’s Lonely Girls
The setting of her new novel is terror-ridden Nigeria, a world away from her native Ireland, but the psychic territory is familiar.
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Oliver Munday; Museo Nacional de Arte And Then Job Said Unto the Lord: You Can’t Be Serious
In a new translation of the Book of Job, the famously repentant hero gives God a piece of his mind.
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Illustration: Paul Spella; Diana Walker / The Life ... Deconstructing Clarence Thomas
The justice’s reactionary legal philosophy rests on faith in the power of adversity to fuel black progress.
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Graywolf Girl, Haunted
A drowning haunts Susan Steinberg’s dark first novel about teenagers’ summer adventures.
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Illustration: Emily Haasch; Library of Congress The Students of Sex and Culture
Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Zora Neale Hurston—spurred on by Franz Boas—revolutionized the way we think about humanity.
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Oliver Munday The Unbearable Smugness of Walking
Glorified for its creative benefits, the pastime has become yet another goal-driven pursuit.
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Reuters / Courtesy E. Jean Carroll You Should Really Read E. Jean Carroll’s Memoir
What Do We Need Men For? is overwhelming. It is exhausting. That is the point.
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Naomi Elliott What We’re Reading This Summer
Atlantic staffers pick 14 books to spend time with this season, including Freshwater, Republic of Spin, Killing and Dying, and more.
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Lucy Jones Tracing the Internal Queer Revolution
Riots and parades have made LGBTQ people visible. But a new anthology of writings from before, during, and after Stonewall shows the inward changes as more essential.
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Katie Martin ‘A Work of Art Designed by the Devil’
Dispatched by Life magazine to cover the Apollo 11 mission, Norman Mailer saw the lunar landing not as a triumph for mankind but as evidence of our hubris.
