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Karolis Strautniekas J. M. Coetzee’s Unsettling Trilogy About a Possibly Divine Boy
The novelist asks how we recognize the truth when it enters the world.
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Sacrée Frangine Why Birds Do What They Do
The more humans understand about their behavior, the more inaccessible their world seems.
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Getty / The Atlantic A Pandemic Novel That’s Oddly Soothing
Lawrence Wright’s The End of October has been heavily touted for its prescience, but the one thing it didn’t anticipate is heartening.
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Tim Macpherson / Getty / Arsh Raziuddin / ... You Will Never Be Forgotten Explores Grief in a Near-Future World
Mary South’s stories of loss are deft parables about the false protection of machines. They also feel particularly apt right now.
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Ernesto Artillo A Novelist’s Ambition to Define America
Robert Stone set out to capture the national condition in fiction, a goal that’s more relevant than ever.
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Späth / ullstein bild / Getty What Alexander Calder Understood About Joy
America’s greatest sculptor gave objects a playful life of their own.
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Jaune Quick-to-See Smith The People Who Profited Off the Trail of Tears
The deportation of Native Americans westward in the 1830s was fueled by busy bankers and unchecked avarice.
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Rodrigo Corral Capitalism’s Favorite Drug
The dark history of how coffee took over the world
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Hulton Archive / Getty An Epic Novel Haunted by the Ghosts of Colonialism
In Maisy Card’s vivid debut, These Ghosts Are Family, spirits expose long-held secrets within fractured families and nations alike.
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Counterpoint The Claustrophobic Menace of Boarding-School Fiction
Two recent novels cannily use all-girls-campus settings to create worlds that feel women-focused but prove to be the reverse.
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Aaron Marin Hilary Mantel Takes Thomas Cromwell Down
As the author’s remarkable trilogy ends, her epic hero’s self-mastery is newly in doubt.
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Illustration: Paul Spella; Sal Alas / Westend61 / ... The Art of Second Chances
In Emily St. John Mandel’s disaster-steeped fiction, a derailed life can take multiple forms.
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Cecilia Carlstedt Abraham Lincoln’s Radical Moderation
What the president understood that the zealous Republican reformers in Congress didn’t
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The Atlantic Three Authentic Writers Have Occupied the Oval Office
On the literary merits of presidential writing
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Rodrigo Corral The Supreme Court’s Enduring Bias
Over the past half century, siding with the powerful against the vulnerable has been the rule in almost every area of the law.
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David Goddard Such a Fun Age Satirizes the White Pursuit of Wokeness
Kiley Reid’s debut novel is a funny, fast-paced, empathetic examination of privilege in America.
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Clemens Habicht The Woman Who Made Modern Journalism
Ida Tarbell championed reportorial methods and investigative goals that are as potent today as ever.
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Chau Luong Inside Tech’s Fever Dream
Drawn into the tech world, a 20-something wonders why she—and the rest of us—didn’t wise up to the grandiose myopia sooner.
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Mario Anzuoni / Reuters Diving Into Pop Music’s Hidden Depths
A new book, from the hosts of the Switched on Pop podcast, approaches the genre with laserlike focus and palpable enthusiasm.
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Kelsey Dake Cool It, Krugman
The self-sabotaging rage of the New York Times columnist
