Tag: next day
Why Women Are Drinking More
More than a decade ago, when Holly Whitaker worked a director-level job at a Silicon Valley start-up, insecurities haunted her. She feared never being enough, never getting ahead. “There was just an inability to be with myself,” she told me, “and that manifested as fear.” She often sought comfort in alcohol. The relief would start even as she anticipated drinking; at the first sip, she began to feel warm and right; numb, but also energized.
In her 2019 book, Quit
An Oppenheimer Expert Watches ‘Oppenheimer’
This article containers spoilers for the film Oppenheimer.
Few authors have written as insightfully about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer as Richard Rhodes, whose 1986 book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is widely regarded as the definitive account of the Manhattan Project. Rhodes’s comprehensive history, which won a Pulitzer Prize, is both a massive work of scholarship—the main text alone runs nearly 800 pages—and a literary feat that he conceived as “the tragic epic of the twentieth
Confessions of a Luxury-Wedding Planner
This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
Sunday mornings, for wedding planners, are reserved for prayer. Not because it’s a particularly pious profession but because that’s the day when clients who were married on Saturday figure out if they’re happy or not. Should they choose unhappiness, Sunday is when they decide whom to
A Censored and Forgotten Holocaust Masterpiece
“There is no possible way of responding to Belsen and Buchenwald,” Lionel Trilling wrote in 1948. “The activity of mind fails before the incommunicability of man’s suffering.” The crimes of both the Nazi and Soviet regimes in the 1930s and ’40s defied all precedents of analysis and feeling. No ism could account for them; no wisdom could make them bearable. Though inside the stream of history, they seemed to belong to a realm of occult, pure evil. Today we’re
Jaime Herrera Beutler’s Lasting Regret
Among the things Jaime Herrera Beutler remembers about January 6, 2021, is that her husband managed to turn off the television just in time.
He was at home with their three young children in southwestern Washington State when the riot began. It had taken him a few moments to make out the shaky footage of the mob as it tore through the Capitol. Then he started to recognize the hallways, the various corridors that he knew led to the House
Paul Whelan’s Family Is Still Fighting for His Release
On Friday, December 2, Elizabeth Whelan was at home on Chappaquiddick, off Massachusetts, when she received a text message from a State Department official—a representative from the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs—asking when she might be available for a visit. He had news concerning her youngest brother, Paul.
“I thought, Okay, this is either one of those routine check-ins or something’s up and it’s probably not good news,” Elizabeth told me. Five days later, the
Inside Ukraine’s Fight for Survival
I had no business going to Ukraine. The country didn’t need another reporter to cover the war. Ukrainian journalists were already doing that much better than I could hope to, and so were plenty of foreigners. I had never set foot in Ukraine; I spoke neither of its languages; I was, my children told me, too old to be a war correspondent again. It would be completely pointless to get killed over there. But selfishness is an underrated motive among
How the Last Establishment Republican Survived Trump
On the afternoon of March 3, 2020, Governor Mike DeWine stepped to a lectern inside the Ohio statehouse to announce his most difficult pandemic decision. Ohio, the governor announced, would bar most spectators from the upcoming Arnold Classic, a bodybuilding and fitness festival hosted annually by Arnold Schwarzenegger that draws a quarter of a million people from 80 countries to Ohio’s capital city. “Everything in life is a risk,” DeWine said. “We all make calculated decisions. We don’t eliminate
The Sisterhood Between Single Mothers
Each installment of “The Friendship Files” features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.
This week she talks with two women who forged a friendship in crisis. When Sarah’s husband left her for another woman—while she was pregnant—she turned to her colleague Theresa, who was raising a daughter alone. They became so close that when Theresa chose to have a second child, Sarah was
How Barr Finally Turned on Trump
Donald Trump is a man consumed with grievance against people he believes have betrayed him, but few betrayals have enraged him more than what his attorney general did to him. To Trump, the unkindest cut of all was when William Barr stepped forward and declared that there had been no widespread fraud in the 2020 election, just as the president was trying to overturn Joe Biden’s victory by claiming that the election had been stolen.
In a series of