No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.But that hasn’t prevented a crowded primary. On the GOP side, more than a dozen candidates are ostensibly vying for the nomination.

This is an edition of the revamped Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.Enormous developments in neuroscience over the past two decades have allowed researchers to peer into the human mind as never before. But it’s not always comfortable to learn about the mechanistic workings of our emotions.

My obsession with salsa, gazpacho, and the line between them began with a joke. A friend had, or so her husband reported, faced her nearly empty refrigerator one night and in a moment of panicked hunger started eating salsa for dinner. Only salsa. No chips. Just spoon straight in the jar. “Did she add water and claim it was gazpacho?” I asked.She had not. But could she have? The suggestion is not absurd. Salsa is an oniony, peppery, tomato-based food.

On Wednesday night, the 2024 campaign season officially began, and it was the weirdest season opener in recent memory. Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, did not show up. And even though the contenders on the stage likely have no chance of winning the nomination, the debate was important, in that a lot was revealed about the future of the party.Nikki Haley came across as the reasonable, truth-telling candidate. She got nowhere.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The first GOP primary debate confirmed the end of the old Republican Party and squelched any hope for a normal presidential election in 2024.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The mercenary always loses.

On Saturday, my wife delicately removed the phone from my hands. It was making me seem a little crazed, she said. I had been on it all day. Closing on a story, refreshing Slack, scrolling through social media, checking my email. I had just texted a friend to recommend an accessory for a vacuum cleaner; it felt like it demanded my urgent attention, the way everything else on the screen did. “i got a horse hair attachment for thr vacuum it js so amazjng,” I had typed, just like that.

In 2019, a Russian foreign-policy hand told me that his country had intervened in Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad for reasons that were, he said, “pedagogical.” Putin had watched the Bush and Obama administrations insert themselves into Iraq, Libya, and Syria, leaving messes in each. Now he would teach America how to intervene right: swiftly, decisively, and without sermonizing about “democracy,” “human rights,” and suchlike twaddle.