Pennsylvania is the fifth-most-populous state in the U.S., home to nearly 13 million residents. From Lake Erie, through the Ridge and Valley region, across Pennsylvania Dutch Country, to the city of Philadelphia, here are a few glimpses of the landscape of Pennsylvania, and some of the wildlife and people calling it home.This photo story is part of Fifty, a collection of images from each of the United States.

double golden shovel with Saba and Nick HakimThere’s Earth. Amethyst. Cherries in heat. Trees drooling sugar. Midnight’s blue song. So what
heaven? That kingdom wholed by a coy god’s touch? Where green and the river began? If
all-father tells it: first you slave and shiver and shuck and die and die for heaven’s
around-back gate to budge loose at the bent speck of you. Lies. No doors, no lines. Look right:
me and mine kissed alive—greening.

In April 1954, James Beard flew from his home in New York to San Francisco and set out on a culinary road trip across the western U.S. The prolific cookbook author was about to turn 51, and feeling stuck in a loop of magazine deadlines, TV appearances, and product shilling. The hustle was constant, satisfaction elusive. “I am pooped, bitched, bushed, buggered and completely at sea with ennui and bewilderment,” Beard wrote to one of his road-trip companions before they left.

On November 7, after four days of counting votes, Democrats celebrated the end of a “long national nightmare.” And when former Vice President Joe Biden took the stage in Wilmington, Delaware, to deliver his victory speech that Saturday night, he quickly extended a hand to President Donald Trump’s supporters, who may have felt demoralized by the loss.“I understand the disappointment tonight,” Biden said. “I’ve lost a couple of times myself.

GIRLS ON A PORCH IN the APPALACHIAn REGION OF OHIO. Rich-Joseph FacunMy Aunt Ruth won’t watch Hillbilly Elegy, the movie adaptation of J. D. Vance’s memoir about growing up in and eventually escaping Appalachia and a mother coping with addiction. Practically speaking, my aunt doesn’t have a Netflix account or any of the smart technology she’d need to stream it.

Each installment of The Friendship Files features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.This week she talks with five representatives of a 12-person fantasy-football league called Raccoon Nation. Their commitment to the league has led to an elaborate infrastructure of regulations and statistics, a trophy for the winners, punishments for the losers, and even merch.

The poet Marianne Moore had a deeply close—perhaps too close—relationship with her mother, Mary. This idiosyncratic bond intrigued Moore’s contemporaries and her biographer Linda Leavell, who trains her eye on it in Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore.

In The Nest, a family moves into an English mansion in the countryside filled with opulent rooms, creaky staircases, and secret passages. The setup is familiar for a horror film: A happy couple buys a mysterious property and discovers, upon arrival, that something is terribly wrong with the house. The movie, directed by Sean Durkin, opens with appropriate portentousness, a discordant piano score clanging over the title card.