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Marvel Comics / Steve Ditko Steve Ditko’s Ordinary People
The legendary comic-book illustrator and writer, who died in June at the age of 90, infused characters like Spider-Man and Doctor Strange with a revolutionary sort of humanity.
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Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post / Getty Remembering Donald Hall, a Poet of Love and Loss
The writer, who died at 89, invested common words with the power of a constructive, shaping force.
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Jim Cole / AP What Donald Hall Understood About Death
In the pieces he wrote for The Atlantic, the late poet embraced the inevitability of aging and decline.
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Zilu8 / Photo Melon / Shutterstock / Arsh ... The Anguished Comedy of Helen DeWitt
The stories in Some Trick, just the writer’s third book in almost 20 years, spin out weird, unlikely conceits with rigor and glee.
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Doug McLean What J.D. Salinger Understood About Chance Encounters
A.M. Homes on the short-story writer’s “For Esmé—With Love and Squalor,” and the lifelong effects of fleeting interactions
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AP The Glorious, Bizarre History of Soccer and Fashion
Simon Doonan’s new book, Soccer Style, summarizes the long and complicated relationship between athletes and outlandish style.
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Kevin Lamarque / Retuers / The Atlantic Bill Clinton’s Novel Isn't a Thriller—It's a Fantasy
The President Is Missing, co-written with James Patterson, indulges in a familiar trope: the country's top executive as action hero.
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Andres Stapff / Reuters A World Cup Without Eduardo Galeano, Soccer’s Poet Laureate
As the 2018 tournament kicks off, it’s worth revisiting the late Uruguayan writer’s classic book on a sport he approached as both a fan and a social critic.
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Studi8Neosiam / SvetMedvedeva / Shutterstock / Arsh Raziuddin ... Florida, Full of Dread
Lauren Groff’s new collection of short stories is an ecosystem teeming with life, decay, beauty, and fear.
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Lisi Niesner / Reuters When Hamlet Starts Showing Up in Federal Court
A Pennsylvania judge’s decision to quote Shakespeare in a recent ruling doubled as a meaningful, yet still ambiguous, interpretation of cultural chaos.
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Chronicle Books Lorna Simpson Maps the Complex Galaxies of Black Women’s Hair
The artist’s new book of collages incorporates magazine clippings, watercolor, and geological formations.
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Mary Hudetz / AP / Arsh Raziuddin / ... What Tracy K. Smith Sees in America
In her latest collection, Wade in the Water, the U.S. poet laureate takes a loving and unflinching look at a country’s present and past.
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Tahreer Photography / Getty Does Honor Matter?
A new book argues it’s a virtue that can motivate people to struggle against injustice—but doesn't adequately consider the more pernicious ways it manifests in society.
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Doug McLean What Richard Pryor’s Stand-Up Can Teach Writers
The nonfiction author Cutter Wood on how the comedian’s work helped him imbue minor characters with emotional life
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Dylan Martinez / Reuters Was Classic Rock a Sound, or a Tribe?
Steven Hyden’s book Twilight of the Gods argues that the appeal of the now-dwindling Baby Boomer guitar gods was only ever personal.
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Joe Tabbacca / AP ‘The Trust of the Reader Is Distrusted by Roth’
How The Atlantic covered the late novelist Philip Roth from 1966 onward—via scathing reader letters, glowing reviews, and personal remembrances
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Pascal Parrot / Sygma / Sygma / Getty The Day the Genius Died
To mourn Philip Roth is also to mourn a particular kind of literary celebrity.
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Richard Drew / AP Remembering Philip Roth, a Giant of American Literature
The writer, who died at the age of 85, was the last of the larger-than-life novelists of the mid-20th century.
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Judy Snow Denison The Literary Insights of Sylvia Plath’s College Thesis
How the author’s undergraduate writings on doppelgängers shaped her most famous work, The Bell Jar, sometimes in troubling ways
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Jim Cooper / AP The Lexicon of Tom Wolfe
Remembering the writer’s contributions to the English language, which went far beyond the most obvious catchphrases that he popularized
