Archive
Your resource for research. Explore the ideas and stories that shaped American history, from 1857 to today.
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Life Up Close
Travel the world to see microbes, plants, and animals in oceans, grasslands, forests, deserts, the icy poles—and wherever else they may be.
The Case for Reparations
Atlantic writers reckon with America's history of racial plunder.
KING
Fifty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a commemoration of his life and work—and a reflection on the reality of today's America.
Planet
A guide to life on a warming planet, featuring the biggest ideas and most vital information to understand Earth’s changing climate, climate policy, and more.
Votes for Women
The signing of the 19th Amendment in 1920 gave women the right to vote, but the complex fight for suffrage didn’t end there.
On Teaching
From 2018 through the first year of the pandemic, the most experienced teachers in America’s education system reflected on their careers, their schools, and the history they’ve witnessed.
Artificial Intelligence
Making sense of the dawn of a new machine age.
2024 Elections
Coverage from the latest election cycle, including campaigns, primaries, and conventions.
Special Project
The Atlantic Writers Project
Contemporary Atlantic writers reflect on 25 voices from the archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.
Editor’s Picks
Why Americans Hate the Media
Why has the media establishment become so unpopular? Perhaps the public has good reason to think that the media’s self-aggrandizement gets in the way of solving the country’s real problems.
February 1996 IssuePut Your Husband in the Kitchen
“I am tempted to think that the perplexed businessman might discover a possible solution of his troubles if he would just spend a few days in his wife’s kitchen.”
August 1932 IssueScience: Careers for Women
The growing need for research workers and scientists has opened new doors for both single women and those combining marriage and a career.
October 1957 IssueDred Scott — A Century After
“The Dred Scott case of 1857 is the most famous — or notorious — in all of our judicial history,” says Fred Rodell, professor of law at Yale University. Mr. Rodell’s latest book, Nine Men, is a political history of the U.S. Supreme Court.
October 1957 IssueThe Prevention of Literature
“To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.”
March 1947 IssueWas Democracy Just a Moment?
The global triumph of democracy was to be the glorious climax of the American Century. But democracy may not be the system that will best serve the world—or even the one that will prevail in places that now consider themselves bastions of freedom.
December 1997 Issue
Notable Writers
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates, the author of Between the World and Me, wrote “The Case for Reparations” as a national correspondent for The Atlantic.
Virginia Woolf
Woolf was a novelist and a pioneer of literary modernism.
Rachel L. Carson
Before writing Silent Spring, Carson made her mark as an environmental journalist with the Atlantic essay “Undersea.”
E. B. White
White was an essayist, a novelist, and a grammarian. His Atlantic essay “Death of a Pig” was a nonfiction prototype for Charlotte’s Web.
Rebecca West
West’s reporting on her travels through the Balkans, published in The Atlantic in 1941, was compiled in the book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
Charles Dickens
One of the most popular writers of his time, Dickens was the author of works including A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities.
Anna Deavere Smith
Smith is an Atlantic contributing writer, a playwright, and an actor.
W. H. Auden
Auden published his first poem for The Atlantic in 1939, the year he emigrated from England to the United States.
Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut was the author of 14 novels, as well as numerous short-story collections, plays, and works of nonfiction.
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