The Atlantic
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The Words They Carry
The Atlantic has begun curating a series of authors’ favorite passages, poems, and lines. The series is called By Heart and includes an essay on each selection and an illustration by Doug McLean. Many authors discuss their favorite line from their favorite…
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“Macho Gay Guys” vs. “Really Gay Guys”
With the recent announcements of two male gay professional athletes, there has been a general feeling of widening acceptance for the LGBT community. But, just as the election of a black president does not mean the end of racism, these…
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The Death of Chick-Lit?
Are the days of chick lit finally over? The Atlantic seems to think so. There’s a new genre in town, and it’s called farm-lit. Novels about women who abandon their high-stress city lives to go live on farms and small,…
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David Sedaris Writes Speeches for High Schoolers?
As strange as it might sound, according to an article in The Atlantic, American humorist David Sedaris included several vignettes in his new book Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls: Essays, Etc. that he specifically wrote for high school speech competitions called “forensics.”…
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The Dark Heart of College Sports
Here is an actual thing said by an actual sports marketing executive to a group of commissioners trying to reform college sports: “You sold your souls, and you’re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous…
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No More Room for “Whom”
Via The Millions, an Atlantic blog post on the death of “America’s least favorite pronoun”: the dreaded “whom.” It always feels like society is crumbling when big linguistic changes occur, but as Megan Garber points out, even notorious grammar stickler…
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Keeping the Doctor Away
Though the apples in your local supermarket may seem homogeneous (they are, in fact, clones), wild apples come in a shocking number of sizes, colors, and flavors. Intrigued by their variety, artist Jessica Rath embarked on a multiyear project photographing…
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Why the Civil War Is Still Worth Talking About
Byliner’s list of spectacular nonfiction articles of 2012 highlights two complementary essays from the Atlantic‘s Civil War issue. First, Yoni Appelbaum uses a hyperrealistic “cyclotron” painting of the Battle of Gettysburg as a pin to puncture the national narrative that the…
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Holiday Wishes
A French bulldog. Big turkey dinners. Happiness. At The Atlantic, Rumpus pal Jon Cotner has taken another stroll through New York City streets to pose blunt, fun questions to strangers. This time the query was: What is your holiday wish?…
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Gaza Roundup
There’s more violence in Gaza today. Emily Hauser asks a tough question about Israeli claims that its strikes are surgical and aimed at terrorists. The IDF used social media to announce and live-blog the attacks, and to celebrate the killing…
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Arrr! What do you mean by “cucumber” walls?
Peter Mountford writes about lending a hand to the mysterious “AlexanderIII” of Moscow, who is conducting a pirated translation of his novel. What begins as an author’s dream of “overhearing” a discussion of his phrase-work quickly becomes something else entirely.…