Isabel Fattal

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For weeks, Donald Trump has been exerting influence on events in the Middle East. After winning the 2024 election, he dispatched his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to the region to help the Biden administration get the Israel-Hamas cease-fire and hostage-release deal over the finish line.

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“Alcohol ambivalence has been with us for almost as long as alcohol,” my colleague Derek Thompson wrote this week. He notes that according to the Greek comic poet Eubulus, of the fourth century B.C.E.

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 The Atlantic’s latest cover story, my colleague Derek Thompson explores how Americans turned anti-social. Many young people are actively choosing the solitary life, spending time at home in front of screens instead of out with other people, he explains.

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 people view reading as though it’s homework, making a list of the books they intend to get through in a given month or year. But perhaps a better approach is to view reading as a mental workout.

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.
New Year’s might as well be called the Day of the Goal.

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.
Small talk, in my experience, is one of those life skills that doesn’t get easier the more you practice.

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If this week was any indication of congressional Republicans’ ability to pass legislation in 2025, it won’t be easy. On Wednesday, it looked like Elon Musk had succeeded in undercutting a bipartisan spending bill, leading the government to the edge of a shutdown.

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In 2022, my colleague Megan Garber reflected on the transactional side of attention. “Far too often, I find myself mindlessly twitch-clicking on an enticing headline, and then reading, and then regretting,” she wrote. “I pay my attention; I instantly wish for a refund.

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In 1931, an Atlantic contributor named Frances Taylor begged stores to take her money.

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This past weekend, Syrian rebels prompted the downfall of a more than 50-year fascist regime. Yesterday, rebels freed detained prisoners; people trampled on burning images of ousted President Bashar al-Assad; families strolled through a ransacked presidential palace, taking pictures.

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.
If you live in a big city, the idea of heading to an area filled with restaurants, finding one you like, and proceeding to sit down with friends or family might seem quaint. Dining out has changed: In recent years, restaurants in major cities are getting harder and harder to book tables at.

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Ronald Reagan, invoking the 17th-century Puritan John Winthrop, once compared America to “a shining city on a hill.” This image of visibility and power, my colleague David Frum writes in a new essay, “imposed extra moral responsibility on the city dwellers.

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In 2019, Sophie Knight reflected on the unusual way she and her husband tried to deal with the imbalance of time spent on home chores: He paid her for housework.

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Thanksgiving can be a time to reconnect with the things we watched, wore, and listened to in the past (especially for those staying in their childhood bedrooms this weekend).

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 the most humbling parts of being alive is realizing you’ve long been doing a simple thing wrong—or, at least, not in the way experts say you should be doing it.

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.
The lives of famous musicians have always inspired intense curiosity from fans and the press alike, sometimes to an unhealthy degree.

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.
If you tell five people you have trouble sleeping, you’re likely to get suggestions for five items that you can purchase. “Sleep is going the way of other types of buyable ‘wellness,’” my colleague Megan Garber wrote last year.

After the second attempt on his life, Donald Trump accused his political opponents of inspiring the attacks against him with their rhetoric. The reality, however, is that Trump himself has a long record—singular among American presidents of the modern era—of inciting and threatening violence against his fellow citizens, journalists, and anyone he deems his opposition. Below is a partial list of his violent comments, from the 2016 presidential campaign until today.

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This is the time for closing arguments from Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. But Trump’s closing argument is not a closing argument at all: It’s an invitation. He and his campaign are acting in hopes of provoking Harris, pushing her to muddle her final message.

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One of the many effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Americans’ social lives was that it allowed introverts and extroverts to understand each other better. “In ordinary times, American introverts are like cats living in Dogland: underappreciated, uncomfortable, and slightly out of place,” Arthur C.

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.
America has a love affair with hobbies, my colleague Julie Beck wrote in 2022. Part of this is an obsession with what scholars have called “productive” or “serious” leisure, which puts efficiency and progress ahead of less clearly defined accomplishments such as rest and time with loved ones.

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This time last year, I revisited an 1862 Atlantic article in which Henry David Thoreau argued that autumn wasn’t getting enough attention. At the time, I noted that fall didn’t exactly seem to be slipping from public consciousness—a trip to Starbucks makes that clear enough.

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For a new feature article, my colleague Franklin Foer interviewed two dozen participants at the highest levels of governments in both the U.S. and the Middle East to recount how “11 months of earnest, energetic diplomacy” have so far ended in chaos. Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the U.S.

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For your weekend reading list, our editors compiled six great stories. Grab a cup of coffee or tea, and settle in.
A Reading List
The People Who Quit Dating
Being single can be hard—but the search for love may be harder.

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White lies can pop up pretty regularly in our everyday social lives. I myself am a recovering white liar: In my teens and early 20s, I found it much easier to fib that I wasn’t feeling well or that I had a family obligation rather than tell an acquaintance I was just too busy to see them.

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To say that Donald Trump is reckless with his public comments is about as big an understatement as you could make. But this week, we are watching the real-world effects of that recklessness play out with alarming speed.
Consider the timeline. On Monday, Trump’s running mate, J. D.

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Lately, my friends and I have been talking about a euphoric feeling you might call the “post-rescheduling thrill.

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In a 1927 Atlantic article, the Episcopal priest Bernard Iddings Bell leveled quite the original insult at college students: They were becoming “mental and ethical jellyfish.” These students were drifters and conformists, Bell complained; they lacked standards and had no real understanding of truth, beauty, or goodness.

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There’s a moment, toward the end of a parent’s trip to drop their child off at college, when it feels like the world is changing. Many describe the joy and loss that mingle in those five minutes walking back to the car.