This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
Some publishing trends so clearly reflect cultural changes that they are easy to explain: Few readers in 2026 are surprised by, say, a sudden crop of books about artificial intelligence, or a best-selling series of novels catering to young gamers. Other literary patterns are more mysterious. This week in The Atlantic, Julia M.
Drop Site News released a major investigation this week into the U.S. bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh children’s school in the Iranian city of Minab on February 28, the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Drop Site spoke to survivors, first responders, parents and witnesses in one of the most in-depth reports on the massacre to date. The bombing killed at least 156 people — 120 of the victims were children, 26 were teachers, and the rest were parents.
Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee has halted executions for the remainder of the year after a death row prisoner survived two lethal injections on Wednesday. According to her lawyers, Christa Pike was still breathing after she was strapped to a gurney and injected with two syringes of pentobarbital in a botched execution that spanned more than two hours.
New York Times investigative reporter Ellen Gabler on what can go wrong when investors stand to profit from a personal-injury lawsuit.
The cryptocurrency has become a sort of emotional tether for a specific type of lost boy. I went to Las Vegas to learn why.
The director of the Ford Foundation’s mission investments program explains why assuming you can’t make a positive impact AND a profit is a big mistake.
Many voters fear artificial intelligence threatens their lives, but the health secretary stressed its potential benefits during a Make America Healthy Again Summit.
Deposed from his House seat by the tea party in 2014, the Virginia Republican has landed one of Washington’s most lucrative lobbying jobs.
The event Tuesday will bring together Trump Cabinet members, corporate executives and the former heavyweight champ.
He was speaking at a French shrine known for miraculous cures.
If they win in November, Democrats want to roll back Trump’s megabill, expand access to care, and win over the Make America Healthy Again movement.
Outward’s hosts sit down with the host and co-creator of When We All Get to Heaven.
The neighborhood changes, the church moves, people forget and remember “the AIDS years,” but AIDS isn’t over.
The AIDS cocktail opens new possibilities. And MCC San Francisco tries to use the experience of AIDS to make bigger social change.
The church’s minister gets sick and everyone knows it.
The church’s “it couple” faces AIDS, caregiving, and loss as part of a pair, part of families, and part of a community.
The Louisiana Republican’s comments come as both Democrats and Republicans have been forced to find ways to address the backlash against data centers.
The new Fed chair will have the spotlight at the central bank’s high-profile conference in Jackson Hole. He should use it.
Vice President JD Vance’s visit marked his second to Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in four months.
Eight decades after the Nuremberg trials against Nazi war criminals, the Trump administration has launched an all-out assault on the International Criminal Court, primarily over the tribunal’s pursuit of Israeli leaders for war crimes committed in Gaza. In his recent address to the United Nations, President Donald Trump called the ICC a “rogue institution” and urged other states to abandon it, and his administration has vowed to dismantle it through sanctions and other pressure tactics.
At about 6 p.m. last night, the Supreme Court lifted a temporary stay placed on the execution of Christa Pike, a Tennessee woman who was found guilty of joining two accomplices in murdering a classmate in 1995, when Pike was 18 years old. Roughly an hour and a half later, Pike, who has spent 30 years on death row, was strapped to a gurney in Tennessee’s death chamber for lethal injection.
The Princess Bride. The Shawshank Redemption. Almost Famous. Over the course of its 51-year history, the Toronto International Film Festival has hosted notable films of all genres and styles. The 2026 edition, which concluded in mid-September, curated movies from rising talent and established filmmakers alike, including a modern-day Nigerian-set remake of Mrs.
Allow me to introduce myself. For the past nine years, I have been the leader of a small, advanced company that is generally unknown to the public but of some renown within my field. We are one of the many teams of engineers working to develop what most people call (somewhat inexactly) the Universal Bone Dissolver.
It sounds like a frightening idea, I know. Science fiction has certainly taught us to be wary of a machine with the power to dissolve all human bones.
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
As modern American journalism began taking shape before the Civil War and newspapers were entering the world at staggering rates, the novelist Cornelius Mathews wondered at what point the profusion should stop, or whether it should stop at all.
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.
Pete Hegseth seems to imagine himself as a man of big ideas. Perhaps you’ve worked with someone like that: Every organization has “idea hamsters,” who spin in their wheels and toss out suggestions of wildly varying quality.
As we continue our coverage on the rise of right-wing political parties across Europe, we speak to Wiebke Judith from the German organization for asylum seekers’ rights, PRO ASYL, about Germany’s far-right party Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, and its recent wins in September’s state elections.
Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman is in Berlin, Germany, this week, where the crackdown on pro-Palestine speech is shaped by the German policy of Staatsräson, or “reason of state.” The concept refers to Germany’s commitment to the existence of the Israeli state in light of the Holocaust. Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in 2023, Staatsräson has manifested itself as German military aid to Israel and heavy policing of Palestine activism inside Germany.
We speak to the prominent AI researcher and leading critic of the AI industry, Timnit Gebru, who was recently awarded a 2026 Right Livelihood Award for her work investigating the harms and hype behind the global buildup of artificial intelligence.
