The Atlantic Daily Newsletter

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. In his 2022 essay on how to want less, Arthur C. Brooks recalls a line from Ralph Waldo Emerson about the dangers of thinking that a new shiny thing or place will fix life’s problems.

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. This week in The Atlantic, Michael O’Donnell took aim at a film critic who is himself notorious for takedowns. Point by point, O’Donnell debunks the arguments in A Sudden Flicker of Light, David Thomson’s new book about how cinema has harmed society.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. To mark the occasion of America’s centennial, the people of Taunton, Massachusetts, invited James Russell Lowell—distinguished poet, founding editor of The Atlantic—to compose and read an ode for the Fourth of July. Lowell didn’t much like what he produced.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Two-hundred years ago, on July 4, 1826, the United States celebrated its 50th birthday. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. And another enduring voice was born: the songwriter Stephen Foster. The timing is fitting, for Foster is a quintessentially American figure.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. No sooner had the Supreme Court issued its opinion in a big campaign-finance case yesterday than my inbox began filling up with nongovernmental organizations and Democratic leaders decrying the ruling. In the case, National Republican Senatorial Committee v.

It’s MAHA Monday at the Great American State Fair, and I am drinking a Phorm Energy Screamin’ Freedom (16 ounces for $6). The fair also offered normal drinks for $5 (Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, lemonade), but I figured that for an extra dollar, it would be worth it to know the taste of freedom. Screamin’ Freedom, specifically. This drink offers “natural energy,” “mental focus,” “hydration,” “zero sugar,” “200 MG caffeine,” and a picture of an eagle.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. This week, the Supreme Court handed down the final seven opinions of its term. The rulings paint a complicated picture; some broadly affirm the president’s executive power, and others seem to rebuff his agenda.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Back in 2016, before he converted to the MAGA cause, J. D. Vance was deeply wary of Donald Trump.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition. Any movie can be a time capsule, but the fantastical nature of animated movies makes them particularly ripe for nostalgia. Revisiting them can be a reminder that although we may grow up, we don’t have to grow out of certain comforts.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. For something that sounds so simple, leisure can be surprisingly difficult. Give people an hour with nothing scheduled, and many fill it with thoughts of to-dos: the unanswered email, the errand that’s been put off, the project due next week.