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Richard Russo fans will recognize some familiar markers of his fiction in his latest novel, Under the Falls. The setting is a landscape of... Read More

On a swaying-palms kind of night in January, I hopped into the back seat of Jeff Zalaznick’s Range Rover to accompany him on his... Read More

It’s odd, when you think about it, that there is no major, comprehensive museum devoted to American music. One can after all make a... Read More

Why does Odysseus weep? Seated as a guest of the Phaeacians, the wandering hero in disguise is treated to a feast, followed by entertainment:... Read More

Throughout 2026, I’ve reported on how the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—the country’s largest private funder of the arts and... Read More

Somewhere in the bowels of Palms Casino Resort, just off the Las Vegas Strip, is a recording studio that has seen countless victories.... Read More

In the ‘Freedom of Self-Consciousness’ chapter of The Phenomenology of Spirit, which follows the better-known parable about the... Read More

The mama lion shouldn’t be here. The sun is too high, the air is too hot, and she has cubs hiding somewhere in the brush. But there she... Read More

The End of Oak Street is a movie from another time. I mean this both literally and figuratively. In the literal sense, The End of Oak Street... Read More

I have spent most of my adult life in elite universities; first as a student, then doing teaching and research. It now feels inevitable that... Read More

In April, the writer Helen DeWitt sparked an internet furor by turning down the $175,000 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize. Dewitt explained... Read More

Is the rapid growth of therapy today making people worse, not better? Might it be a cause, perhaps even the central cause, of today’s... Read More

The workday started at 7:00, but it was not until 7:22 that Tommy Keough and his rusted-out clunker, with its yellow party plates, noisily... Read More

The most thrilling dinosaur movie in decades comes not from any “Jurassic Park” sequel or spin-off, but from a strikingly... Read More

LOVERS XXX (2026) tells the story of best friends Winnie and Jude. The novel, set in the neon-lit porn scene of 1980s Los Angeles, follows... Read More

In Los Angeles, Tea at Shiloh describes itself as a “late night teahouse.” Here, visitors can reserve slots from 7 to 11 p.m. to... Read More

Let me begin with breakfast. You wake up, shuffle to the kitchen. Coffee or juice? A small decision, trivial. And yet nested inside that... Read More

IN THE SUMMER 1989 issue of The American Scholar, Gerald Howard, freshly forced from his editorial role at Viking Penguin, gave voice to his... Read More

I study how AI is reshaping work, including my own. In my job as the head of economics at Anthropic, I’ve personally experienced a... Read More

On August 5, 2013, a man and a woman ate a burger. Not just any burger: a world-historical burger, made from cattle cells grown in a lab by... Read More

Readers familiar with Dr. Seuss’s classic, The Cat in the Hat, will remember the twin chaos agents Thing 1 and Thing 2.... Read More

I attended a reading once where Mary Gaitskill was asked by an eager MFA type about whether her being “famous” had any bearing on... Read More

Last week I wrote a bit about Vermont’s Covered Bridge Week, celebrating our hundred or so quaint but practical mid-19th century... Read More

We judge our enemies by their actions and our allies by their intentions. The moral lapses of our enemies: hypocrisies. The moral lapses of... Read More

When I was a student, years ago, I heard about a secret Stanford class that wasn’t listed in the course catalogue. According to my... Read More

What a glorious time of year. Summer’s end nears like an approaching ship on the hazy horizon. Hints of a crisp autumn begin to present... Read More

The tech ghouls don’t know me like they once did. Despite my attempts to coax the algorithmic overlords away from suggesting interview... Read More

The unsettling images in John Ashbery’s The Tennis Court Oath (1962) were collaged from lines found in a children’s book.... Read More

On Friday, July 31, 2026, Lieutenant Commander James M. Ennes, Jr., U.S. Navy, ret., slipped his cable and unfurled his sails. With the Great... Read More

My Dharma or reason for being is devilishly simple: to maximise pleasure and to shuffle off this mortal coil before the nursing home... Read More

Chang-rae Lee’s new novel, A Tender Age, recalls a period of childhood freedom impossible for today’s iPhone-toting kids —... Read More

On an especially sweltering July afternoon, the sun beats down on a group of men in prison blues brawling on the yard of Atlanta’s... Read More

Is America transitioning to a “postliterate” society? The question has occasioned a flurry of commentary of late. In “The... Read More

Retirement has garnered considerable attention from observers of democratic politics in the past few years. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch... Read More

The reactionary champions of “free thought” on X have declared The Atlantic’s September cover story by Tyler Austin Harper... Read More