Today's Liberal News

Maya Chung

The Art Monster Under the Bed

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
Art-making is not the kind of work that is easily confined between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. An artist needs ample time to spend putting pen to paper, or brush to canvas; they also require unbounded hours or days to let their mind wander in search of inspiration. As Hillary Kelly has written for this magazine, “the dream state, the musing, the meditation” is what “makes space for ideas.

The Lessons of Aging

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
Over the past few months, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about old age. Earlier this year, most Americans seemed to share my fixation, as voters debated President Joe Biden’s mental fitness for a second term.

When One Animal Changes a Human’s Mind

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
Over the past week or so, my X feed has been overtaken by Moo Deng, the baby pygmy hippopotamus whose glistening skin, jaunty trot, and rippling neck rolls have won the internet’s devotion.

A Different Kind of Female Protagonist

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
This week, we published two essays about new books featuring unusual, surprising female protagonists.

Poetry Is an Act of Hope

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
Poetry is the art form that most expands my sense of what language can do. Today, so much daily English feels flat or distracted—politicians speak in clichés; friends are distracted in conversation by the tempting dinging of smartphones; TV dialogue and the sentences in books are frequently inelegant.

What to Read to Understand Russia

Welcome to the Books Briefing, our weekly guide to The Atlantic’s books coverage. Join us Friday mornings for reading recommendations.
A century and a half after they were writing, authors such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky still rule the canon of Russian literature.

What California Means to Writers

What about California captures the imagination of American writers? The state—the country’s most populous, and one of its most diverse—provides fodder for every sort of author.This week, Ross Perlin wrote about Malcolm Harris’s new book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, which argues that the titular city, as well as Silicon Valley at large, is responsible for “wreaking havoc on the planet and immiserating so many of its people.

What Politicians’ Libraries Tell Us

What can we learn from the reading habits of our political leaders? Like any preference, they provide a window into the priorities, obsessions, and inspirations of some of world history’s most consequential figures. Gabriel Boric, Chile’s progressive president, is a “serious reader of poetry,” Lily Meyer writes. One might wonder how his reading has influenced his robust education platform, which promises free university and student-debt forgiveness.

The Allure of the Campus Novel

Why are so many writers drawn to campus novels? In a 2006 article, Megan Marshall writes that the genre is “escape reading.” Citing older works such as The Harrad Experiment and 3 in the Attic, Marshall sees many college novels as “fumbling and sophomoric confessionals.” That’s certainly changed. Campus novels today have expanded beyond the confines of the Ivy League and deal with some of our society’s most pressing questions.