This is an edition of the revamped Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.Our summer reading guide is now live! This is our annual feature in which The Atlantic’s writers and editors get a chance to play that slightly pushy character at the backyard barbecue who practically screams out, “I just finished this book, and you need to read it! Right now.
I learned how to be funny from Martin Amis.I don’t mean in person—I’m not funny in person, and I don’t know if Amis was, either. Although our paths crossed a couple of times after he moved to Brooklyn, I never spoke with him for long enough to learn whether the caustic hilarity of his 20th-century novels—which I devoured in the 1990s and then studied, trying to understand how their humor worked—was a feature of Amis’s social persona or just his writing.
We look at the largely forgotten 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when police in Chicago shot at and gassed a peaceful gathering of striking steelworkers and their supporters, killing 10 people, most of them shot in the back. It was a time like today, when unions were growing stronger. The workers were on strike against Republic Steel, and the police attacked them with weapons supplied by the company. The tragic story is told in a new PBS documentary.
May 19 marked what would have been the 98th birthday of Malcolm X. The director Spike Lee gave the keynote address at an event marking the day at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, which is housed in the former Audubon Ballroom in New York where Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965.
As attacks on the teaching of Black history escalate in Florida and other states, we hear from The New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on “The 1619 Project.” She spoke on May 19 at the Malcolm X and Dr.
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers group, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. It is the longest sentence handed down so far to any participant in the January 6 insurrection, when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the halls of Congress to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory.
Debt ceiling talks and court battles risk also cutting off public health funding and PrEP drug access.
Negotiations between Biden and GOP leaders are targeting public health dollars slated for combating record infection rates.
During a two-hour oral argument, the judges appeared sympathetic to an anti-abortion medical group seeking to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.
His effort is the latest sign the progressive stalwart is toggling between his activist persona while pressing for a deal on what he thinks can pass a narrowly divided Senate.
As legislative sessions come to a close, state lawmakers are divided over whether children and teenagers should be able to have an abortion without telling their parents.
The Fed is paying particular attention to so-called core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs and are regarded as a better gauge of longer-term inflation trends.
POLITICO asked a panel of strategists and elected officials what under-the-radar issue they think could play an outsize role in 2024.
The slowdown reflects the impact of the Fed’s aggressive drive to tame inflation.
A bombshell new investigation from The Intercept reveals that former U.S. national security adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was responsible for even more civilian deaths during the U.S. war in Cambodia than was previously known. The revelations add to a violent résumé that ranges from Latin America to Southeast Asia, where Kissinger presided over brutal U.S. military interventions to put down communist revolt and to develop U.S. influence around the world.
The New York Democrat called on Biden to not negotiate with Republicans as the debt default date draws closer.
This story contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Showtime’s Yellowjackets.Back when she was just a member of the championship high-school soccer team known as the Yellowjackets, Natalie (played by Sophie Thatcher) was a wide midfielder, according to fans who studied the few scenes of the girls in action. The position comes with little glory. Wide midfielders don’t normally score the goals themselves; they are tasked with attacking from the wings and providing assists.
Whoops! The son of the former president inadvertently dragged his own father.
The Florida governor froze up on Newsmax just one day after technical difficulties spoiled a Twitter Space announcement of his presidential run.
The revelation could broaden the timeline for any potential criminality or obstruction.
After crowing about getting $80 billion for Internal Revenue Service customer service and tax enforcement, the White House may bargain some of it away.
Somehow, America’s desire for Ozempic is only growing. The drug’s active ingredient, semaglutide, is sold as an obesity medication under the brand name Wegovy—and it has become so popular that its manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, recently limited shipments to the U.S. and paused advertising to prevent shortages. Its promise has enticed would-be patients and set off a pharmaceutical arms race to create more potent drugs.
Today we relaunched The Atlantic’s flagship podcast, Radio Atlantic, with a new host: senior editor Hanna Rosin, a former Atlantic writer who went on to become the editorial director for audio at New York magazine. “There’s this phrase someone said to me recently: road-testing ideas, like you would road-test a car,” Hanna says in the trailer for the new podcast. “You run them through the dirt, see if they can stand up to actual real-world conditions.
Growing up in suburban New Jersey, I dreaded having new visitors over. I wasn’t asocial; I just feared that anyone who wasn’t Chinese—as in, the majority of my classmates—wouldn’t understand my family home and all of its inevitable differences from their own. Even if they didn’t ask me about the cultural objects they might stumble upon around the house, I felt the need to explain what they were seeing, in order to make them comfortable.
A new Oxfam analysis released as the leaders of the Group of 7 nations met in Hiroshima, Japan, shows G7 countries collectively owe poor nations in the Global South more than $13 trillion in development and climate assistance. But instead, these countries are saddled with daily debt repayments of $232 million, deepening the global chasm of inequality.
As calls grow for an end to the war in Ukraine, a number of recent developments indicate the war could instead be expanding beyond Ukraine’s borders. Russia has signed an agreement with Belarus to begin deploying tactical nuclear weapons there, and a group of pro-Ukrainian fighters from Russia has attacked sites in the Russian region of Belgorod using what appears to be U.S.-made armored vehicles and Humvees.
Ron DeSantis officially launched his presidential campaign Wednesday, pitting the Florida governor against his former ally Donald Trump and at least five other Republicans in a fight for their party’s 2024 nomination. His formal announcement came in a Twitter audio stream hosted by the company’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, and was beset by technical problems.
Debt ceiling talks and court battles risk also cutting off public health funding and PrEP drug access.
Negotiations between Biden and GOP leaders are targeting public health dollars slated for combating record infection rates.
During a two-hour oral argument, the judges appeared sympathetic to an anti-abortion medical group seeking to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.