The Confidence Gap
Evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men—and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence. Here's why, and what to do about it.
May 2014
In This Issue
Why successful women lack self-assurance—and men have too much, the end of desegregation, the odd life of a retired pope, the case for secrecy, the annual money report, and more
Features
Segregation Now ...
Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, show how separate and unequal education is coming back.
The Pope in the Attic: Benedict in the Time of Francis
What’s it like for the first living ex-pope in 600 years to watch from up close as the successor he enabled cheerfully dismantles his legacy?
Why We Look the Way We Look Now
The modern style of clothes emerged in the Depression, and so did the focus on the figure beneath the fabric—with a startling result: as Americans' wardrobes became more similar, bodies diverged along class lines.
Get the digital edition of this issue.
Subscribers can access PDF versions of every issue in The Atlantic archive. When you subscribe, you’ll not only enjoy all of The Atlantic’s writing, past and present; you’ll also be supporting a bright future for our journalism.The Money Report
Mike McQuade Africa’s Tech Edge
How the continent's many obstacles, from widespread poverty to failed states, allowed African entrepreneurs to beat the West at reinventing money for the mobile age
Dan Saelinger Where the Card Sharks Feed
In 2011, the Justice Department targeted online-poker operators for violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Since then, many guileless amateurs, known to poker pros as “fish,” have been moving back to casinos.
The Pirate Economy
The high price of warding off hijackings in Somali waters
Dispatches
Johnny Selman We Need More Secrecy
Why government transparency can be the enemy of liberty
Rami Niemi Our Gullible Brains
How our senses influence our thoughts
Office Talk Visualized
The origins of workplace jargon
John Cuneo He Hunted Osama bin Laden, He Breaks Into Nuclear-Power Plants
The unlikely career of Dalton Fury
Rijuven A Stethoscope That Can See
A new tool lets doctors turn sound waves into graphs.
Matt Chase A New Golden Age for Media?
An era of investment in the news business is upon us. Will it last?
Álvaro Domínguez A Better Battery
Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and former secretary of energy, and Yi Cui, a celebrated battery researcher who works with Chu at Stanford, describe how an overhaul of the unglamorous battery will jump-start a shift to renewable energy.
James Walton Survival Tweets
#Lebanon #LatestBombing
olegtoka/Shutterstock The Vodka Wars
A very short book excerpt
The Culture File
Reading the Beatles
Forget the recent spate of books on the Fab Four. The only volume you need was published 20 years ago today …
Nadav Kander/Trunk Archive Our Nudge in Chief
How, and why, Cass Sunstein believes laws and public policies should help save us from our irrational impulses
Paul X. Johnson The Disillusionist
Edward St. Aubyn, who can make words do just about anything, can’t help mistrusting precisely that power.
Jillian Tamaki A Chekhov From China
Yiyun Li’s latest novel maps new extremes of loneliness.
Norton How Shirley Temple Helped FDR
The tiny actress showed demoralized grown-ups how much spunky perseverance could achieve.
Departments
The Conversation
Responses and Reverberations
The Big Question
Q: What was the worst business decision ever made?
