The Atlantic Out Loud

The social-media era is over. What’s coming will be much worse. By Damon Beres From the ⁠⁠December 2025 issue⁠⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How the critic Malcolm Cowley made American literature into its own great tradition By Michael Gorra From the ⁠⁠December 2025 issue⁠⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearing 80, the punk poet reflects on the twists in her story that have surprised even her. By Amy Weiss-Meyer From the ⁠⁠December 2025 issue⁠⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What will we lose when we lose the “literary outdoorsman”? By Tyler Austin Harper From the ⁠⁠December 2025 issue⁠⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump is trying to amass the powers of a king. By J. Michael Luttig From the ⁠⁠December 2025 issue⁠⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our election system is reaching a breaking point. By David A. Graham From the ⁠⁠December 2025 issue⁠⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his fiction, the author of The Golden Compass tells us how to love this world. It isn’t easy. By Lev Grossman From the ⁠December 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I want to feel, as Walt Whitman did, that America and democracy are inextricable. By George Packer From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Without one, America may sink into autocracy for decades. By David Brooks From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For nearly 250 years, America promoted freedom and equality abroad, even when it failed to live up to those ideals itself. Not anymore. By Anne Applebaum From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices....

Washington Irving’s story isn’t just about a very long nap. It’s about the making of America. By John Swansburg From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How he used America’s past to rescue its future By Jake Lundberg From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She lived for 97 years. Only 24 of them were with Alexander Hamilton. By Jane Kamensky From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They might be surprised that the republic exists at all. By Fintan O’Toole From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Founders were inspired—and threatened—by the independence and self-governance of nations like the Iroquois Confederacy. By Ned Blackhawk From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph...

Telling the full story of the town’s past is an easy way to make a lot of people mad. By Clint Smith From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The idea that everyone has intrinsic rights to life and liberty was a radical break with millennia of human history. It’s worth preserving. By Elaine Pagels From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choic...

The question of what Jefferson meant by “all men” has defined American law and politics for too long. By Annette Gordon-Reed From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What the Founding Fathers ate—and drank—on July 4, 1777 By Victoria Flexner From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How a lost copy of the Declaration of Independence unlocked a historical mystery By Danielle Allen From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Benedict Arnold’s boot wouldn’t come off, and other hardships from my weekend in the Revolutionary War. By Caity Weaver From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thousands of African Americans fought for the British—then fled the United States to avoid a return to enslavement. By Andrew Lawler From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/a...

One of the most influential and ardent Patriots couldn’t persuade his son to join the Revolution. By Stacy Schiff From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The co-directors of the new PBS series describe how they made a documentary about a war distant in time and shrouded in myth. By Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more ab...

The geological origins of the American Revolution By Robert A. Gross and Robert M. Thorson From the ⁠November 2025 issue⁠. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices