The feature stories, dispatches, columns, essays, and original fiction in The Atlantic's November issue include:
The Bloomberg Way
As part of The Atlantic's Brave Thinkers list, the magazine's annual guide to the people risking everything in pursuit of big ideas, James Bennet
sits down with Michael Bloomberg for a typically candid interview. The
New York City mayor discusses his soda ban, approval ratings, and the 2012 presidential race, among many other topics:
- On why high approval ratings mean you're failing: "If I finish my term in office ... and have high approval ratings, then I wasted my last years in office. That high approval rating means you don't upset anybody...You always want to press, and you want to tackle the issues that are unpopular, that nobody else will go after."
- On how President Obama alienated Wall Street: "He had enormous support three years, or three and a half years, ago...I think a lot of [people on Wall Street] were frustrated that he didn't give the change that they had expected. I think a lot of them thought he'd be more of a centralist and less of a populist once he got elected."
- On whether Obama deserves credit for ordering the raid that killed Osama bin Laden: "That's like giving Harry Truman credit for dropping the bomb: any president would've pushed that button, any president would've dropped the bomb."
Digital exclusive: view a gallery of Bloomberg's boldest mayoral moments, and read a full transcript of the conversation.
Brave Thinkers 2012
Every year, The Atlantic
highlights individuals who are risking their reputations, fortunes, and
lives in pursuit of ideas that upend the established order. Check out
this year's list of 21 brave people and groups, ranging from Supreme
Court Chief Justice John Roberts to the Russian punk collective Pussy
Riot.
Read more
A Brief History of Brave Thinking
Since 1857, The Atlantic
has presented some of America's most provocative thinkers, people with
the bravery to challenge convention or imagine the future. Here,
snippets from 155 years' worth of Brave Thinking in the magazine--from Vannevar Bush's sketch of a curious device that resembles what is now the Internet to John Muir's ideas leading to the creation of the U.S. Forest Service.
Read more
Digital exclusive: watch a highlights reel of past and present Brave Thinkers.
Hacking the President's DNA
The
U.S. government is surreptitiously collecting the DNA of world leaders,
and is reportedly protecting that of Barack Obama. Decoded, these
genetic blueprints could provide compromising information. Andrew Hessel, Marc Goodman, and Steven Kotler
assert that, in the not-too-distant future, the data may provide
something more as well--the basis for the creation of personalized
bioweapons that could take down the president and leave no trace.
Read more
General Failure
Looking
back on the troubled wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many observers are
content to lay blame on the Bush administration. But inept leadership
by American generals was also responsible for the failure of those
wars. Thomas E. Ricks exposes
a culture of mediocrity within the Army's leadership rank. If it is not
uprooted, the country's next war is unlikely to unfold any better than
the last two.
Read more
Dispatches
My Conversion Will Not Be Televised
How did Graeme Wood
end up on TV debating Salafism with an Egyptian cleric? He was lured on
the air with a tantalizing offer: the chance to ask the cleric anything
he wanted.
Read more
The Deer Paradox
It's never been easier to shoot a buck. So Tim Heffernan wonders: Why are hunters spending billions on high-tech gear?
Read more
Steal My Book!
What do you do if you discover your novel is being illegally pirated in Russia? If you're Peter Mountford, you assist the rogue translator.
Read more
The Court Crasher
SCOTUSblog devotes more resources to covering the Supreme Court than has any other media outlet in history. As Stephanie Mencimer reports,
the blog's founder and publisher, Tom Goldstein, changed not only how
news gets out of the Court--but how lawyers argue before it as well.
Read more
Sprucing Up Your Cocktail
Spruce, a lost flavor of the northern woods, has been rediscovered and, according to Wayne Curtis, is on its way to a well-crafted cocktail near you.
Read more
Columns
Busy and Busier
In The Atlantic's new technology column, the productivity expert David Allen talks with James Fallows about the future of getting things done.
Read more
Prisoners of Cable
Even with all the TV and entertainment options that are available to stream or download, Derek Thompson explains why we just can't break free from our cable overlords, and their pesky bundling system.
Read more
The Amis Obsession
Martin Amis has run with no bulls, head-butted no Gore Vidals, repented for no fake memoirs. So, James Parker asks, what accounts for his peculiar fame?
Read more
Digital exclusive: watch an August 2010 video of Amis in conversation with Christopher Hitchens.
Fiction
"Clean," by Edward J. Delaney
You
think of that night endlessly, the decisions made, the chain of
mistakes. The irony of getting away with murder is that you become your
own executioner. In a pang of remorse, you could open your mouth and
change your life.
Read more
These articles and more are featured in the November issue of The Atlantic, available today, October 25, 2012, on TheAtlantic.com and newsstands.
About The Atlantic
Since its founding in 1857 as a magazine about "the American Idea" that would be of "no party or clique," The Atlantic has been at the forefront of brave thinking in journalism. One of the first magazines to launch on the web in the early 1990s, The Atlantic has continued to help shape the national debate across print, digital and event platforms. With the addition of its news- and opinion-tracking site, TheAtlanticWire.com, and TheAtlanticCities.com, The Atlantic is a multi-media forum on the most critical issues of our times, from politics, business, and the economy, to technology, arts, and culture. The Atlantic is the flagship property of Washington, D.C.-based publisher Atlantic Media Company.
