Science
The Atlantic
LOYALISTS, LAPDOGS, AND CRONIES
When Donald Trump first took office, he put a premium on what he called \"central casting\" hires-people with impressive résumés who matched his image of an ideal administration official. Yes, he brought along his share of Steve Bannons and Michael Flynns. But there was also James Mattis, the decorated four-star general who took over the Defense Department, and Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs chief operating officer who was appointed head of the National Economic Council, and Rex Tillerson, who left one of the world's most profitable international conglomerates to become secretary of state.
5 min |
January - February 2024
The Atlantic
Kennedy and the Lost Cause
In his 1956 book, Profiles in Courage, the future president promoted the southern mythology of Reconstruction. One Massachusetts grandmother wasn't having it.
10+ min |
December 2023
The Atlantic
The Black Roots of American Education
How freedpeople and their advocates persuaded the nation to embrace public schooling for all
10+ min |
December 2023
The Atlantic
A Traitor to the Traitors
The Confederate general James Longstreet became a champion of Reconstruction. Why?
10+ min |
December 2023
The Atlantic
The Men Who Started the War
John Brown and the Secret Six-the abolitionists who funded the raid on Harpers Ferryconfronted a question as old as America: When is violence justified?
10+ min |
December 2023
The Atlantic
The Years of Jubilee
In 1871, the choir of the struggling Fisk University engaged in a gambit to save the school: It decided to go on a singing tour of America. The choir achieved more than its members could have imagined.
10+ min |
December 2023
The Atlantic
The Annotated Frederick Douglass
In 1866, the famous abolitionist laid out his vision for radically reshaping America in the pages of The Atlantic.
10+ min |
December 2023
The Atlantic
The Archive of Emancipation
In the papers of the Freedmen's Bureau, I found the hopes and disappointments of a people on the cusp of freedom-including my own family's.
10+ min |
December 2023
The Atlantic
The Atlantic and Reconstruction
What we got wrong in 1901
5 min |
December 2023
The Atlantic
The Revolution Never Ended
The federal government abandoned Reconstruction in 1877, but Black people didn't give up on the moment's promise.
10+ min |
December 2023
The Atlantic
The Questions That Most Need Asking
“Reconstruction,” by Frederick Douglass, appeared in the December 1866 issue of this magazine. It was the most important article that The Atlantic published in the immediate postwar era. It was also, for its time, unusually concise, coming in at a mere 2,703 words.
4 min |
December 2023
The Atlantic
What Is Comedy For?
The question has never been harder to answer.
5 min |
November 2023
The Atlantic
Madonna Forever
Why the artist keeps scandalizing each generation anew
10+ min |
November 2023
The Atlantic
The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived
A novelist transforms the physicist John von Neumann into a scientific demon
10 min |
November 2023
The Atlantic
WHAT ΜΙΤΤ RΟΜΝΕΥ SAW ΙΝ ΤΗE SENATE
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, THE HYPOCRISY AND CYNICISM ARE EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK
10+ min |
November 2023
The Atlantic
Her?
No one seems to think Kamala Harris is ready to be president. Here's what they're missing.
10+ min |
November 2023
The Atlantic
We Are Not at War.We Are at Work.
RUNNING THE WASHINGTON POST IN DONALD TRUMP'S D.C.
10+ min |
November 2023
The Atlantic
THE PATRIOT
What does a general do when the commander in chief undermines the Constitution?
10+ min |
November 2023
The Atlantic
BLACK SUCCESS, WHITE BACKLASH
Black prosperity has provoked white resentment that can make life exhausting for people of color-and it has led to the undoing of policies that have nurtured Black advancement
10+ min |
November 2023
The Atlantic
Zadie Smith Has Doubts About Fiction
In her ambitious new novel, she asks whether we expect too much of the genre.
10+ min |
October 2023
The Atlantic
The Man Who Became Uncle Tom
Harriet Beecher Stowe said that Josiah Henson's life had inspired her most famous character. But Henson longed to be recognized by his own name, and for his own achievements.
10+ min |
October 2023
The Atlantic
Life After "I Do"
George Eliot's subversive vision of marriage
10 min |
October 2023
The Atlantic
The Other Naomi
A left-wing author finds herself constantly confused with a right-wing conspiracist.
8 min |
October 2023
The Atlantic
I, Sly
Sly Stone tells his story.
5 min |
October 2023
The Atlantic
THE FINAL DAYS
JOE BIDEN WAS DETERMINED TO GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN-NO MATTER THE COST
10+ min |
October 2023
The Atlantic
The Joy and the Funk and the Mire
The critic dream hampton thinks hip-hop is broken. But she can't stop trying to fix it.
10+ min |
October 2023
The Atlantic
THE PRIME MINISTER and THE MOONIES
THE BIZARRE STORY BEHIND THE ASSASSINATION OF SHINZO ABE
10+ min |
October 2023
The Atlantic
Jenisha From Kentucky
I came to New York sure of one thing-that no one could ever know my past.
10+ min |
October 2023
The Atlantic
NIXON BETWEEN THE LINES
Alone in his study, ballpoint pen in hand, the president revealed himself in the margins of his books.
10+ min |
October 2023
The Atlantic
TRUMP ON TRIAL
The drama now unfolding will make for perhaps the most surreal presidential-election cycle in American history. How will it end?
10 min |