Isabel Fattal

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Some critics of the suburbs argue that they’re not a place at all. “The anthropologist Marc Augé coined the term non-places to describe interchangeable, impersonal spaces lacking in history and culture that people pass through quickly and anonymously,” Julie Beck wrote last year.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Why have Americans clung so hard to the dream of a fancy wedding? Hanna Rosin asked Xochitl Gonzalez, our staff writer who used to be a luxury-wedding planner, this question on the Radio Atlantic podcast in 2023.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Regret, my colleague Julie Beck wrote in 2016, is “the emotional price we pay for free will.” If we were just pawns tossed around on the chessboard of life, she explains, there’d be nothing to regret.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
One of my highlights of the past year has been receiving your weekly emails with photos that spark a sense of awe in the world around you. In reviewing your submissions, I’ve most enjoyed seeing how the beholder’s mind works.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
One of my highlights of the past year has been receiving your weekly emails with photos that spark a sense of awe in the world around you. In reviewing your submissions, I’ve most enjoyed seeing how the beholder’s mind works.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Judy Blume’s Forever wasn’t a book that most readers just stumbled upon. “Obtaining, hiding, and reading it—and then sharing it with others—was a rite of passage for many teens who came of age during and after the sexual revolution,” Anna Holmes writes of the teen novel.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Good news: If you’re worried you might be a phony, there’s a good chance you’re the real deal. “The true phony is convinced they’re not one,” Arthur C. Brooks explained earlier this summer.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
As a self-proclaimed evening person, I struggle to admit this, but I do find my rare early mornings calming and satisfying in a way I never expected. As Arthur C. Brooks notes in a recent article, not everyone is built to feel their best at the same time of day.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
“When the national media turns its eye to college campuses, it often focuses on the ways the college experience has evolved in recent years,” Ashley Fetters wrote in 2018.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
College athletics were once casual and fun, more like a club sport than a serious endeavor. But “over the past 75 years, NCAA sports has become ever more professionalized,” Marc Novicoff wrote recently.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
In 2024, Russell Shaw made the case for the Lighthouse Parent. “A Lighthouse Parent stands as a steady, reliable guide,” Shaw writes, “providing safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
In 2024, Russell Shaw made the case for the Lighthouse Parent. “A Lighthouse Parent stands as a steady, reliable guide,” Shaw writes, “providing safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Nine years after Canada legalized assisted death—known formally as Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID—doctors are struggling to keep up with demand, Elaina Plott Calabro reports in a feature for our September issue.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Conventional wisdom says that a beach read ought to be light and fun—a book with a pastel cover. But the beach read can be anything you want it to be. Vacation might feel like the perfect moment to escape into frivolity, or to dive into something dense that you finally have the mental space for.

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Overnight, Israel’s security cabinet approved a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to occupy Gaza City, a plan that neither the Israeli security establishment nor the majority of the Israeli public supports.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
After losing his corporate marketing job during the pandemic, Stephen Starring Grant decided to move back home and become a rural mail-carrier associate in Blacksburg, Virginia.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
“Reading has been unfairly maligned as an indoor activity for far too long,” Bekah Waalkes wrote this past spring. “As a child, when nice weather came around, I was told to put down my book and go play outside.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
A family vacation can seem like the solution to all of life’s tensions: You’ll spend time together, bond, and experience a new place. But travel isn’t a panacea.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
A family vacation can seem like the solution to all of life’s tensions: You’ll spend time together, bond, and experience a new place. But travel isn’t a panacea.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
It’s become an adage of the modern age to say that the more streaming options there are, the harder it is to decide what to watch.

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Japan is the one place in the world that has felt, and personally mourned, the staggering damage of nuclear warfare. The tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have turned the country into a longtime proponent of nuclear disarmament. But that national identity is starting to shift.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Although exercise has clear benefits for both physical and mental health, for many people, “those are side effects of the aesthetic goal,” Xochitl Gonzalez wrote in 2023.

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Atlantic writers have never been afraid to make bold claims about beloved foods and beverages. Hard seltzer? Pretty bad, Amanda Mull argued in 2022. Wraps? The worst kind of sandwich, Ellen Cushing argued this week. Others have stood up for oft-maligned cuisine, like milk chocolate and candy corn.

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In some corners of American culture, one rule applies: The less you sleep, the more impressive you are. Tech CEOs and influencers love to tout their morning routines that begin at 5 a.m. or 4 a.m. or 3 a.m. (though at a certain point we really ought to just call them “night routines”).

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Being offended can make a person feel powerless. Someone says (or posts) something hurtful, and the sting comes fast. It doesn’t dissipate just because you tell it to.
But there are some ways to control our experience when we feel insulted.

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Before the air conditioner was invented, human beings were at a loss for how to cool themselves.

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College-graduation ceremonies are expressions of joy, but also of relief. As photos are taken, tassels turned, hugs exchanged, the hope is that all of the hard work, and the money, will have been worth it.
But many Americans aren’t convinced that it is.

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“History found you.” In 2020, Caitlin Flanagan told recent college graduates that their dreams were interrupted in much the same way her father’s dreams had once been interrupted. In 1941, he was a new student at Amherst College, “and he thought it was paradise,” Caitlin wrote.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
People in a vegetative state may be far more aware than was once thought, Sarah Zhang reports in a recent feature. “In some extraordinary patients, the line between conscious and unconscious is more permeable than one might expect,” she writes.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Many of us spend our teenage years working tirelessly to avoid becoming our parents. But sooner or later, we discover that we didn’t stray quite as far as we thought.