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The News Media as a Political Institution by Timothy E. Cook University of Chicago, $48 This is a provocative and often wise but ultimately unsatisfying book that ends just as [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry, detail from the north wall, Detroit Institute of Arts/The Bridgeman Art Library 'What's your idea?' reads a plaintive sign on the [...]

Byline: James Bennet B.F. Skinner and his wife observe their daughter in a 'baby tender,' a crib with a controlled environment, which Skinner invented to keep babies safe. (Associated Press) [...]

Byline: James Bennet It was really not all that long ago that a 'brand' was just a useful symbol for purposes of distinguishing the ownership of one cow from that [...]

Byline: James Bennet Paul Sancya/Associated Press In the early days of the Republican primary season, during the politically bewildering scramble for advantage in which casino winnings bankrolled 'conservative values' and [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Kevin Kolczynski/Reuters One Sunday morning in August 1996, the political strategist Dick Morris picked up the telephone and called his boss, Bill Clinton, to raise [...]

Byline: James Bennet The building that today houses the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery-and many of the images in this special issue of The Atlantic-was originally the U.S. Patent Office, and [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Dean Kaufman A quiet hero of Walter Isaacson's unblinking biography of Steve Jobs is the Apple founder's father, Paul Jobs. Isaacson portrays the elder Jobs [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: The Moviestore Collection Late last summer, late one night, I was midway through Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 novel, Super Sad True Love Story, when I had [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: James Bennet It is an eerie, even ghoulish, sight: a sleek black signpost bristling with brushed-steel arrows that point helpfully in Chinese and English down [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos On September 11, 2001, I was on the telephone with the first editor on hand that morning at the New York Times [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Bob Winsett/Monsoon/Photolibrary/Corbis Little League baseball was not, for me, an exercise in stoking self-esteem. I hated myself for striking out, and I hated myself even [...]

Byline: James Bennet Headline from the Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1986 Matthew McGough wanted to write about art theft, not homicide. That’s why he drove down to Los Angeles [...]

Byline: James Bennet Almost four years ago, in The New York Times Book Review, a celebrated writer lamented the decline in the publication of short stories, and with it, a [...]

Byline: James Bennet The Android Trademark is a Registered Trademark of Google, Inc. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, likes to say we are approaching an age of 'augmented humanity,' [...]

Byline: James Bennet Stephen Voss We are presenting, in our annual State of the Union issue, two very different faces of the Republican Party, which emerged from the midterm elections [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Mario Anzuon/Reuters/Corbis When The Atlantic’s editors assembled our first group of Brave Thinkers a year ago, among those we singled out was Jeff Zucker, the [...]

Byline: James Bennet and Ron Fournier So when is the next economy going to emerge? Later rather than sooner, it seems, judging from the depressing economic indicators of late. Which [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images In one of the comic strips Garry Trudeau drew shortly after graduating from Yale 40 years ago, the everyman, Mike Doonesbury, is [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Alain Keler/Sygma/CORBIS 'I swear I believe Armageddon is near,' Ronald Reagan confided to his diary on June 7, 1981. He had just learned that the [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: John Springer Collection/Corbis It’s been much noted that over the past decade, most of our big institutions, private and public, have not exactly covered themselves [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Swim Ink 2, LLC/CORBIS We have a collection of pieces in this issue that approach from very different angles what we are calling 'The Future [...]

Byline: James Bennet I have some good news. Next month, The Atlantic will once again send fiction home to our subscribers, in a special supplement that will accompany our May [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Comstock/Corbis Immense Numbers of Visitors Oration by Hon. Edward Everett -- Speeches of President Lincoln, Mr. Seward and Governor Seymour So read the headline in [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image Credit: Mai/Time & Life/Getty Images When he first ran for president more than 10 years ago, George W. Bush talked a good deal about restoring honor [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: David Freers/Transtock/Veer Saturn always seemed like Exhibit A of the magnificence of General Motors, and of its folly. Here was a corporation of such scale [...]

The opera house in Damascus was a long time coming. Hafez al-Assad, the iron-willed military man who ruled Syria for three decades, was in power just a few years when [...]

The day they buried Yasir Arafat in the Ramallah fort that had become his prison, the most remarkable sight was not the thousands who brushed aside Palestinian security to swarm [...]

This is a story about fighting Palestinian chaos and corruption, about seeking to throw off Israeli occupation and build a democratic state of Palestine. It is about these things, because [...]

In his front-row seat in the Senate chamber, Strom Thurmond sits with mouth slackly agape. His thin, rust-colored hair is stretched back from the top of his head, so straight [...]

Inside the General Motors advanced design studios in Warren, Mich. -- past the security guards, past the sign reading ''no cameras or image-capturing devices,'' through two sets of locked doors [...]

As George W. Bush prepares to be inaugurated as the 43rd president of the United States, those who have not studied him closely tend to divide into two camps: the [...]

When Elliot Lee Richardson worked at home in those days -- and when he was home and awake, he was generally working -- he sat in an easy chair in [...]