For the Union Dead
A poem
Sex and the College Girl
“I think that the charge that men have become emasculated by the competence of women is both depressing and untrue.”
The Lesson of Iraq
“Let us not forget that our essential policy interests are identical with those of the Arabs.”
Science: Careers for Women
The growing need for research workers and scientists has opened new doors for women. Helen Hill Miller, who for many years was Washington correspondent for the London Economist, describes some of the work being done in science both by single women and by those who successfully combine marriage and a career.
High Hurdles and White Gloves
The first modern Olympic games took place in Athens sixty years ago in a stadium holding seventy-five thousand. The American hurdler Thomas P. Curtis won the Gold Medal in his event; he also found time to make notes of what happened.
The Control of Energy
One pound of uranium carries more releasable energy than 1500 tons of coal, and the solar energy that reaches the earth in a single day is equivalent to that released by two million Hiroshima A-bombs. Better control of these and other forms of energy is basic to man's progress.
New England and the South
“The southward migration of industry from New England has too frequently taken place for causes other than normal competition and natural advantages.”
Our Mistakes in Korea
“The deliberate political design by which two Administrations treated the Korean War as if it were an insoluble military problem … confused the American public and, confusing it, dulled its memory.”
News and the Whole Truth
“Too much of our news is one-dimensional, when truth has three dimensions (or maybe more); and in some fields the vast and increasing complexity of the news makes it continually more difficult—especially for us Washington reporters—to tell the public what really happened.”
The Future of Man
Bertrand Russell calmly examines three foreseeable possibilities for the human race.
Miracle at Kitty Hawk: Unpublished Letters of the Wright Brothers (Part I)
“It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill. This I conceive to be fortunate, for man, by reason of his greater intellect, can more reasonably hope to equal birds in knowledge than to equal nature in the perfection of her machinery.”
The Open Mind
The former head of the Manhattan Project wrote about how to advance peace in the nuclear age, just four years after he directed the construction of the world’s first atomic bomb.
Death of a Pig
“I just wanted to keep on raising a pig, full meal after full meal, spring into summer into fall.”
Atomic War or Peace
Seventy years ago, Einstein offered the United States and the international community advice on how to coexist in the shadow of the bomb.
Loot for the Master Race
“Göring resorted to every conceivable device to fill the walls and the coffers of Carinhall, bargaining, cheating, even invoking where necessary the prestige of German arms or the terrible threat of intervention by the Gestapo.”
As We May Think
“Consider a future device … in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”
How Bad is the Flu?
“The possibility of recurrent epidemics, perhaps of increasing virulence, even of another pandemic, must be faced.”
The Education of a Queen
Princess Elizabeth will be eighteen on her next birthday. How does her education compare with that of an American girl of the same age? And how does it compare with that of Victoria, who was also educated to be queen?
China Emergent
In the midst of World War II, as China's Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, struggled against Japanese invaders from without and the Communist movement from within, his Wellesley College–educated wife decried the exploitation of China by the West and delineated a vision for a more democratic future.
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: Part I
In 1937, Rebecca West set out to see for herself why the "Powderkeg of Europe" had so often threatened the fate of the continent.
We Stand Here
Two Yale students defend their isolationism.
Concentration Camp
“Men ... are brought, for the 'protection of the people and the State,' into a concentration camp without hearing, without court sentence, without the possibility of redress, and for an indefinite time.”
Love in America
“It is as if the experience of being in love could only be one of two things: a superhuman ecstasy, the way of reaching heaven on earth and in pairs; or a psychopathic condition to be treated by specialists.”
Hitler Looks Eastward
Two years before Hitler invaded Poland, an Atlantic author predicted the Reich’s expansion and how it would affect the various nations of Eastern Europe.
Letters From the Dust Bowl
When drought struck Oklahoma in the 1930s, the author and her husband stayed behind to protect their 28-year-old farm. Her letters to a friend paint a picture of dire poverty, desiccated soil, and long days with no sunshine.
Swastika
“National Socialism is not only a protest against the Treaty of Versailles. It is a revolt against the ideals of democracy.”
The Roosevelt Experiment
“The Roosevelt experiment, in a word, is a systematic effort to put capitalism into leading strings of principle. It is to be the servant, and not the master, of the American people.”
Confessions of a Novelist
“What I mean to try for is the observation of that strange moment when the vaguely adumbrated characters whose adventures one is preparing to record are suddenly there, themselves, in the flesh, in possession of one, and in command of one’s voice and hand.”
Put Your Husband in the Kitchen
“I am tempted to think that the perplexed businessman might discover a possible solution of his troubles if he would just spend a few days in his wife's kitchen.”
Whirlwinds of Speculation
“The pouring forth of this great torrent of new units of speculation results in the inevitable consequences dictated by the law of supply and demand.”
State Pensions or Charity?
“It is time for us to devise ways of meeting the inevitable disaster of old age and the almost equally inevitable disasters of sickness and unemployment, and these must be ways that will not fail when the stock market breaks or a new machine is invented, that will function in the lean years as in the fat years, and that can be accepted without loss of self-respect.”
‘Inside Information’
“Securities in corporations whose directors are known to be trading in and out of the stock on special information for their own personal profit are coming more and more to be looked upon askance by investors.”
Gangs
"People called them hoodlums, and hoodlums they were, but they were a gusty element in community life, noisy and forceful."
Catholic and Patriot: Governor Smith Replies
“I recognize no power in the institutions of my Church to interfere with the operations of the Constitution of the United States or the enforcement of the law of the land.”
Stop, Look, Listen! The Shareholder's Right to Adequate Information
Just a few years before the Crash of 1929, Harvard economics professor William Z. Ripley warned that corporations weren't providing accurate financial information to their investors and argued that a framework of regulatory oversight was needed. The creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934 has been in part attributed to Ripley's Atlantic writings.
The Bear Hunt: An Original Ballad Never Before Printed
Light verse composed by America's sixteenth president
The Modern View of Evolution
“Evolution makes its appeal to reason, but its acceptance does not mean the abasement, let alone the denial, of emotion, faith, and religion.”
In China, Too
Pearl S. Buck, an American-born writer who was raised in China and continues to live and teach there with her husband, reflects on the social and cultural changes transforming China's young people.
Jazz: A Musical Discussion
“As a state of mind, [it] is symptom, not malady.”
Relativity and the Absurdities of Alice
“Since 1913, a number of gentlemen wearing glasses and looking wondrous wise, and no doubt as wise as they look, have proved to us that it can always be teatime if we care to figure it out properly.”
Prison Cruelty
“The prison cannot be changed as long as the old basis of suppression and isolation is maintained.”
The Idea of a League of Nations
"What has happened is essentially this, that the natural limitations upon warfare which have existed hitherto appear to have broken down."
Revolutionary Justice
“I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I had swallowed a magic pill which had transformed things. Cooks and duchesses; ragged soldiers and resplendent generals; collarless workingmen and bewigged and begowned judges, had changed places.”
The Threatened Eclipse of Free Speech
“When we start out to kill enemies abroad on a gigantic scale, we are not likely to hesitate to gag those at home who seem directly or indirectly to sympathize with the foe.”
The Nation's Crime Against the Individual
“The modern soldier's hope of finding some universal values and transcendent principles involved in his nation’s struggle and hallowing it, is more certain of disappointment than ever before.”
A Group of Poems
"Birches," "The Road Not Taken," and "The Sound of Trees"
Some Confessions of a ‘T.B.’
“There is no walk of life which we have left entirely uninvaded. We are everywhere, in everything. If a climax is desired, even the throne has no immunity from our adventurous and versatile persistence in attempting occupations.”
A Plea for the Recognition of the Chinese Republic
About a year after the revolutionary overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, Ching Chun Wang, a Chinese railway official and representative of the emergent republic, makes a case for international recognition.
The Lawrence Strike: A Study
“At present there probably cannot be a judicial presentation of the case; time is needed to put events in true relation to causes. But it is possible to correct some falsities and relieve some perplexities regarding essential facts.”
Why I Came to America
“’We live in a land of strangers, where there is no soil for the seeds of our activity to find roots. Remember, David, we are strangers!’”
A Fixed Idea
A poem
The Heart of the Race Problem
“The problem, How to maintain the institution of chattel slavery, ceased to be at Appomattox; the problem, How to maintain the social, industrial, and civic inferiority of the descendants of chattel slaves, succeeded it, and is the race problem of the South at the present time. There is no other.”
What It Means to Be an Enfranchised Woman
“The vote is an indefinable something that makes you part of the plan of the world. It means the same to women that it does to men.”
Politics (1857-1907)
“The process by which a nation was created and unified came at last to an end, and a still more fateful process began which was to determine its place and example in the general history of the world.”
New York After Paris
"New York is trying to create for itself a new mind as well as a new body."
Village Improvement
"'Will it be beautiful?' should be asked as to any proposition for improvement, but it is not by any means the first question to be asked."
An American Primer
“These States are rapidly supplying themselves with new words, called for by new occasions, new facts, new politics, new combinations.”
The Negro in the Regular Army
“The sterling characteristics of the colored soldiers, their loyalty to the service as shown by the statistics of desertion, and, above all, their splendid service in Cuba, should have entitled them to additional organizations.”
The Disarmament Trust
A New York Times editor spins a fable in which banking giant J.P. Morgan strikes a deal for world peace.
The Freedmen's Bureau
“No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth, — What shall be done with slaves?”