Browse back issues of The Atlantic from 1857 to present
that have appeared on the Web.
From September 1995 to the present, the archive is essentially complete,
with the exception of a few articles,
the online rights to which are held exclusively by the authors.
The 2020 disinformation war, David Brooks on the nuclear family, #MeToo and the abortion-rights movement, and new fiction by Samantha Hunt. Plus trusting Nate Silver, the Supreme Court’s enduring bias, climate change and peer pressure, an ode to cold showers, and more.
The miseducation of the American boy, John Hendrickson on Joe Biden’s stutter, 20,000 feet under the sea, and a thriving conservative-Catholic community in Kansas. Plus Charlize Theron, Silicon Valley’s failure to deliver, the myth of free shipping, how flamenco went pop, and more.
A nation coming apart: articles by Danielle Allen, Caitlin Flanagan, James Mattis, Tom Junod, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Adam Serwer, and others. Plus the demise of “I’m sorry,” Texas secessionists, Leslie Jamison on Garry Winogrand, the tribe of Peloton, Queen & Slim, how to raise kind kids, and more.
The Tech Issue: Jeff Bezos’s master plan, when GoFundMe gets ugly, and why the world is getting louder. Plus Mark Bowden on what military generals think of Trump, Jack Goldsmith’s family and government surveillance, Sandra Boynton, baseball cards, why you never see your friends, and more.
Ivanka and Don Jr.’s fight to succeed Trump, why James Mattis quit, when Medicaid takes everything you own, and the culture war in schools. Plus the power of menopause, black athletes at white colleges, Susan Sontag, Juanita Broaddrick, serial killers, and more.
How 1 million black families were ripped from their farms, life with Lyme disease, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the lunch ladies of New Canaan. Plus Leslie Jamison on pregnancy after an eating disorder, meritocracy’s miserable winners, HBO’s sex-scene coach, how economists broke America, Clarence Thomas, and more.
Why police fail to catch sexual predators, Raj Chetty’s American dream, the jailhouse true-crime writer, and Drew Gilpin Faust on Virginia and race. Plus measles as metaphor, Sam Shepard as prophet, the stock-buyback swindle, new short fiction, and more.
The Workplace Report: The problem with HR, the end of expertise, and managing your professional decline. Plus William Langewiesche on MH370, watching extinction in real time, gay hookup culture and consent, the Earth’s deepest secrets, and more.
Abolish the priesthood, Trump’s bigotry, Viktor Orbán vs. CEU, Mireya’s third crossing, and was Shakespeare a woman? Plus Desus and Mero, the women who changed spycraft, real-time fact-checking, Aïda Muluneh’s vision for African photography, how the food revolution ruined eating, and more.
The Health Report: One doctor’s penance for overprescribing opioids, and the trouble with dentistry. Plus George Packer on the American century’s end, Kamala Harris takes her shot, Walt Whitman and democracy, Trump’s second term, the poetry of sportswriters, yet another George Bush, and more.
David Frum on immigration, will John Bolton bring on Armageddon, the fertility doctor’s secret, the towers that Trump never built, and white nationalism’s deep American roots. Plus William J. Burns on Putin and Russia, how AI will rewire us, the ‘Female Byron,’ James Fallows vs. leaf blowers, why America needs ‘Ellen,’ psychiatry’s hubris, and more.
Sexual-misconduct allegations against the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ director Bryan Singer, the scientists rethinking animal cognition, the politics of disgust, and how Russian kleptocracy came to America. Plus Alfonso Cuarón’s feminist oeuvre, active-shooter drills’ damaging effects on children, how humans tamed themselves, FDR and Hoover’s fight over big government, and more.
The president’s extraordinary emergency powers, how Tibet went crazy for hoops, rescuing American exceptionalism, and why we’re so angry. Plus a new term for ‘LGBTQ,’ modern feminism’s RBG obsession, how authoritarians wage war on women, fiction by Samanta Schweblin, and more.
The inside story of the Clinton impeachment, why exorcisms are on the rise, and will the American left go too far? Plus an open letter to Elena Ferrante, the Democrats’ white-people problem, misinterpreting Frederick Douglass, Jack Reacher’s latest novel, addictive language apps, and more.
The Tech Issue: The Pentagon aims to weaponize the brain, a generation of kids raised on YouTube, and Alexa’s most dangerous feature. Plus how Newt Gingrich broke politics, Pope Francis and Óscar Romero, the case for liberal Republicanism, Knausgaard devours himself, the personal cost of black success, and more.
The crisis in democracy: articles by Anne Applebaum, Stephen Breyer, Jeff Rosen, David Frum, Amy Chua, and others. Plus the price of sports protests, what getting shot taught Elaina Plott about American politics, the brutal truth about climate change, why #brands are not our friends, James Parker on Rick and Morty, and more.
How courtrooms are inhospitable to female trial lawyers, the nasty scientific feud over what killed the dinosaurs, and how your brain deceives you. Plus the rise of Latino populism, Caitlin Flanagan on ‘Lolita,’ American poetry’s next generation, what your work emails reveal, YouTube’s gun guru, and more.
The Health Report: America isn’t prepared for the next plague, the life-expectancy gap between black and white Americans, and when children say they’re trans. Plus William Langewiesche on a B-2 stealth raid in Libya, the formula for team chemistry, the dangers of distracted parenting, Jean-Michel Basquiat, weird DNA, and more.
A Muslim among Israeli settlers, the pearl at the center of an 80-year-old hoax, Marti Noxon putting women’s rage on TV, and pop culture’s response to Trump. Plus, Kissinger on AI and the end of humanity, an interview with Seth Meyers, the search for life on Mars, NRATV, and more.
The Sports Report: Malcolm Jenkins, praise for fair-weather fans, Floyd Landis takes down Lance Armstrong, and the mobster who bought his kid a hockey team. Plus the U.S. military’s plunging morale, James Fallows on reinventing America, a new era of fake videos, an interview with Issa Rae, and more.
The women who busted a con man, refugee detectives in Germany, and why cartoonists struggle with drawing Trump. Plus the problem with Nancy Pelosi’s effectiveness, BLM meets sci-fi, an interview with Cory Booker, fiction by Mary Morris, and much more.
Why the Chinese love Trump, Paul Manafort and the corruption of U.S. politics, how we will feed the new global middle class, and why you should boycott the GOP. Plus, Mark Bowden revisits the world’s most body-conscious man, Caitlin Flanagan on Modesty Blaise, the failure of American democracy, fiction by Will Mackin, and more.
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Russia’s election-hack gamble, God’s plan for Mike Pence, and the case against college for everyone. Plus, exoneration without DNA evidence, Eva Moskowitz’s charter-school revolution, the jellyfish apocalypse, and more.
The making of an American Nazi, the evolution of the alt-right, and the rise and fall of ‘Rolling Stone.’ Plus, China’s race to find aliens first, ‘Shark Tank’ nation, and more.
Most cases are not life-threatening, which is also what makes the virus a historic challenge to contain.
In May 1997, a 3-year-old boy developed what at first seemed like the common cold. When his symptoms—sore throat, fever, and cough—persisted for six days, he was taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong. There his cough worsened, and he began gasping for air. Despite intensive care, the boy died.
Puzzled by his rapid deterioration, doctors sent a sample of the boy’s sputum to China’s Department of Health. But the standard testing protocol couldn’t fully identify the virus that had caused the disease. The chief virologist decided to ship some of the sample to colleagues in other countries.
At the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the boy’s sputum sat for a month, waiting for its turn in a slow process of antibody-matching analysis. The results eventually confirmed that this was a variant of influenza, the virus that has killed more people than any in history. But this type had never before been seen in humans. It was H5N1, or “avian flu,” discovered two decades prior, but known only to infect birds.
If centrists can’t move past their doctrine and recognize when their candidates are unelectable, then how will Democrats ever beat Trump?
The two major policy pitches of the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in 1972 were clear: an immediate end to the Vietnam War, and an immediate guarantee of a minimum income for all Americans. George McGovern ran for president that year, but the most progressive Democratic nominee in recent history did not get very far. He suffered the second-largest rout for a Democrat in American Electoral College history.
Incumbent Richard Nixon won 49 states and 520 electoral votes, severely wounding the spirits of countless young progressives. And I don’t think some of them ever fully recovered. “It was a generational defeat,” as BuzzFeed’s Katherine Miller wrote.
The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.
The scene is one many of us have somewhere in our family history: Dozens of people celebrating Thanksgiving or some other holiday around a makeshift stretch of family tables—siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, great-aunts. The grandparents are telling the old family stories for the 37th time. “It was the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen in your life,” says one, remembering his first day in America. “There were lights everywhere … It was a celebration of light! I thought they were for me.”
The oldsters start squabbling about whose memory is better. “It was cold that day,” one says about some faraway memory. “What are you talking about? It was May, late May,” says another. The young children sit wide-eyed, absorbing family lore and trying to piece together the plotline of the generations.
A peaceful transfer of power is necessary for American democracy to survive.
If Donald Trump is defeated in November 2020, his presidency will end on January 20, 2021. If he is reelected, then, barring other circumstances such as removal from office, his administration will terminate on the same day in 2025. In either of these scenarios, Trump would cease to be president immediately upon the expiration of his term. But what if he won’t leave the White House?
The American Constitution spells out how the transfer of power is supposed to work. Article II provides that the president “shall hold his office for the term of four years.” The 20th Amendment says that the president’s and vice president’s terms “shall end at noon on the 20th day of January … and the terms of their successors shall then begin.” Of course, a president may be reelected to a second four-year term, but under the 22nd Amendment, “no person shall be elected to the office of president more than twice.”
My sister is beautiful, talented, and successful, and I don’t understand why she’s wasting her time with this guy.
Dear Therapist,
My sister was dating a guy who we thought was an okay guy. They are both in their late 30s. Two months into dating, my sister got pregnant. He is divorced and has a 3-year-old daughter. He makes $700 a week and is struggling to make ends meet, while my sister owns a home and a business. They had discussed his moving into her home so he could “get out of debt.”
After speaking with her therapist, she realized that moving in together was a horrible idea, and she retracted her offer. He completely lost it. As my sister told me more, the red flags were flying high. He has a temper, he’s a narcissist, and much more. So my sister made the most awful decision she has ever had to make and decided to terminate the pregnancy. He couldn’t even take her to the abortion appointment because he’d run out of sick time, nor could he help pay for it. Meanwhile, I’m three months pregnant myself, and the amount of stress and anger this has caused me (and my poor husband, who has had to listen to all this) is beyond words. But I’ve been 100 percent supportive of my sister throughout this whole terrible situation.
Harvey Weinstein may be headed to prison, but few women will ever see their perpetrators brought to justice.
A jury has convicted the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who had the starring role of villain in the #MeToo movement, of sexually assaulting two women. He was acquitted of the most serious charge, predatory criminal assault.
“This is an absolutely stunning day,” says Jane Manning, a former sex-crimes prosecutor in Queens, New York. “This man used all his wealth and all his power to buy himself impunity, and today, that impunity ended.”
Weinstein faces at least five years in prison for raping Jessica Mann, an aspiring actor, in a Manhattan hotel room on March 18, 2013. The jury also found that he forced Miriam Haleyi, a former production assistant, to have oral sex at his home on July 10, 2006. His lawyers have already said they plan to appeal “immediately.”
An investment firm was supposed to help Fairway survive. So why is the company now filing for bankruptcy?
The news of Fairway Market’s second foray into bankruptcy, this time with the threat that stores could be liquidated to pay off the unsustainable debt hanging over the grocery chain, dismayed its legions of loyal Manhattan customers. Fairway’s New York City stores draw an eclectic crowd of shoppers: local residents, professors and students at schools from the City University of New York to Columbia University, and others seeking its fresh-baked breads, unusual cheeses, and wide range of international foods. Upscale and idiosyncratic, with its humble roots still evident, Fairway is emblematic of the city in which it has become a storied institution. But, fatefully, it is also emblematic of the way private-equity investors—including Fairway’s former owner Sterling Investment Partners—have hastened the fall of brick-and-mortar stores caught in the so-called retail apocalypse.
An out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality can take hold when people lose their connection to nature.
My mother situated me on her hip, took a deep breath, and stepped off our porch into the icy floodwaters. I was 2 years old.
It was March 1974, and the rain had been pummeling Lily, Kentucky, for two weeks. The ground had become so saturated that the flash flood came all at once. By the time my mother had navigated us through the waist-high mix of overflowing creek water, sewage, and debris to higher ground, my father had made it home from work, where he found water reaching the windows of our trailer. Family members came to help and frantically piled some of our belongings into a metal rowboat. When the flood receded, my parents salvaged what they could, but after days of shoveling mud, they found that the floors, furnace, and appliances had been destroyed. My mother says this was the first time she ever saw my father, a Vietnam veteran and auto mechanic, cry.
Where socialism imagines greater concentrations of power, her vision ultimately points in the direction of a more decentralized, more competitive economy.
Despite all the newspaper endorsements, Senator Elizabeth Warren is an underappreciated politician—and the candidate herself is among the ranks of those who have sold her short. She is a deep and original political thinker. Over her time in academia and in the Senate, she has evolved a distinctive critique of American capitalism as presently practiced, and a lyrical vision of what might replace it. Based on her presidential campaign, however, you wouldn’t really know it.
While Warren has clashed with some of the candidates to her right—she chastised former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg for his foray into a wine cave and accused former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg of oligarchic tendencies—she has declined to truly delineate herself from Senator Bernie Sanders. The sharpest distinction Warren has drawn with her ally from Vermont is her gender. In a more accurate rendering of the pair, that is only the beginning of their differences.
The episodes in which critics’ predictions weren’t borne out offer valuable lessons for Trump’s challengers, even if they still vigorously disagree with the moves the president has made.
It’s 2020, and America is embroiled in not one but two catastrophic wars: one with Iran that has sucked in the entire Middle East, and another halfway across the world in North Korea sparked by Kim Jong Un test-firing nuclear-capable missiles that could hit the United States. It’s all the worse since the U.S. is waging both wars without allies, all of which have abandoned Donald Trump because of his incessant bullying.
Fortunately, this isn’t where we find ourselves today, but it’s what the president’s critics have been warning could occur if he carries on with policies that have shattered decades of conventional U.S. policy making. It’s not as if their concerns have no factual basis. The Trump administration really did come to the brink of war with Iran and North Korea. In neither case are the underlying tensions that got them there anywhere near resolved. America’s alliances are indeed in flux. But the fact that this is not our reality in 2020 is just as instructive as the fact that it could have been.