1/ In a turbulent year, Atlantic writers have sought to provide readers with practical advice. But some of the stories that have resonated most have also offered insight for our everyday life. Here are a few words of wisdom from the year: theatlantic.com/newsletters/ar…
3/ Your 20s don’t have to be the “best time of your life,”@Rainesford wrote. “This glorification of youth also seems to assume that everyone has the same resources; moves on the same timeline, in the same way; and has the same kind of life.” on.theatln.tc/UdiAuRQ
4/ Gratitude toward one’s partner is less an individual act than a habit of noticing and re-noticing their value. Having that practice can be a significant predictor of relationship quality, @NicolausWriting wrote. on.theatln.tc/VwM34hC
5/ For decades, Liz Cutler and Tom Kreutz have saved hard conversations for quarterly meetings they call “contract talks.” Though we’re told not to “bottle up” feelings, delaying conflict can actually help, not hurt, relationships, @rhainacohen reported: on.theatln.tc/c9KvBMf
6/ @zakijam wrote on the importance of “other care” as we navigate late-pandemic malaise. “The very same act of helping can deplete or fulfill us, depending on how we think about it,” he argued. on.theatln.tc/w1c1cQT
7/ Women learn from a young age to appear at once competent and kind, effortless and accommodating, graceful and ungregarious, @AnnaHolmes wrote. But saying no has long been the key to female self-respect and political empowerment. on.theatln.tc/PzeSMyO
8/8 In a survey done in the early months of the pandemic, more than half of people reported feeling grateful, and almost 70 percent expected to feel grateful in the future. @sbkaufman on how difficult circumstances are an overlooked route to gratitude: on.theatln.tc/OTJ1wfY
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1/ 55 years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis.
Writers and thinkers ever since have tried to understand King’s legacy, which has been complicated and confused over half a century: theatlantic.com/projects/king/
2/ Seven days diverted the course of a social revolution and changed America forever.
Our new podcast “Holy Week” tells the story of the fiery, disruptive period following King’s assassination: theatlantic.com/podcasts/holy-…
3/ “The sound bites evoking King are stretched like skin over the bones of existing debate. The figure celebrated looks nothing like the leader who lived—and who was killed—but like a granite-chiseled modern founding father,” Vann R. Newkirk II writes. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Writer Deborah Copaken reflects on lessons learned from her decade-long friendship with Nora Ephron, who “teaches me, by example, how to navigate the postreproductive half of my life.”
1/ The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The first Black person in Salem, Massachusetts, to formally teach white students. The longest-serving first lady.
To mark #WomensHistoryMonth, we’re sharing essays from women in history whose work appears in our pages:
2/ Charlotte Forten Grimké was an educator and abolitionist who wrote with forceful moral urgency. She was the first Black woman to appear in the pages of The Atlantic.
3/ If you know anything about Helen Keller, it's about her experience as a deaf and blind person in America. But Keller’s “writing about other subjects is incandescent,” @elcush once noted.
“For the past three years,” @AdrienneLaF writes, “I’ve been preoccupied with a question: How can America survive a period of mass delusion, deep division, and political violence without seeing the permanent dissolution of the ties that bind us?” on.theatln.tc/7ue6Tlk
In recent years, Americans have contemplated whether we’re moving toward a second Civil War. But what the country is experiencing now—and may continue to experience for a generation or more—is something different: a new phase of domestic terror.
Political violence is all around us, @AdrienneLaF writes. Today, it is “characterized by radicalized individuals with shape-shifting ideologies willing to kill their political enemies.”
Lounging around can free up time for things beyond your to-do list, @IsabelFattal writes. Here’s a reading list about do-nothing time—why we need it, how much of it we need, and the possibilities it creates: on.theatln.tc/MgWZv0U
@IsabelFattal Jason Heller and his wife have an agreement: One day a week, they do absolutely nothing.
In a society obsessed with productivity, this is harder than it should be—but it’s worth it: on.theatln.tc/AgE8VfK
@IsabelFattal Last August, Arthur C. Brooks argued that absolute idleness is harder—but more rewarding—than it seems: on.theatln.tc/nXSPfYm
As we mark the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, revisit George Packer’s October 2022 cover story. He traveled to Ukraine and spoke with people who had rallied to save their nation and defend the values Americans claim to hold. on.theatln.tc/CUB5r7V
"Here, all the complex infighting and chronic disappointments and sheer lethargy of any democratic society ... dissolved, and the essential things—to be free and live with dignity—became clear," Packer writes. on.theatln.tc/CUB5r7V
“It almost seemed as if the U.S. would have to be attacked or undergo some other catastrophe for Americans to remember what Ukrainians have known from the start,” he continues. on.theatln.tc/CUB5r7V