The Patriot
How General Mark Milley protected the Constitution from Donald Trump
November 2023
In This Issue
General Mark Milley, Mitt Romney, and Kamala Harris. Plus “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” new fiction by Jesmyn Ward, the purpose of comedy, Emily Wilson’s “Iliad,” Black success and white backlash, John von Neumann, Madonna forever, and more.
Cover Story
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What Mitt Romney Saw in the Senate
In an exclusive excerpt from my biography of the senator, Romney: A Reckoning, he reveals what drove him to retire.
How We Got ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’
And other stories from eight years running The Washington Post
The Kamala Harris Problem
Few people seem to think she’s ready to be president. Why?
Fiction
Photo-illustration by Oliver Munday. Sources: GHI Vintage / Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group / Getty; Bettmann / Getty. She Who Remembers
A short story
Dispatches
Illustration by Gabriela Pesqueira. Source: Getty / Artpartner-Images. Black Success, White Backlash
Black prosperity has provoked white resentment that can make life exhausting for people of color—and it has led to the undoing of policies that have nurtured Black advancement.
Culture & Critics
Illustration by Elizabeth Hart. Sources: Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty; Scott Campbell / Getty; Mike Coppola / Getty. Comedians Only Care About Comedy
A new book cured me of any attachment to the idea of the stand-up as truth-telling philosophe.
Ken Regan / Camera 5 / Contour RA by Getty What Madonna Knows
The artist is always one step ahead—and has a unique power to scandalize each generation anew.
Illustration by Lola Dupre. Source: IanDagnall Computing / Alamy. The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived
A novelist transforms the physicist John von Neumann into a scientific demon.
Illustration by Rachel Levit Ruiz What Emily Wilson’s Iliad Misses
Her new translation is inviting to modern readers, but it doesn’t capture the barbaric world of the original.
Departments
The Atlantic The Commons: ‘We Must Never Forget the Evil That Occurred to Individuals With Developmental Disabilities’
Readers respond to our September 2023 cover story.
The Atlantic Caleb's Inferno: November 2023
A devilish crossword puzzle
Poetry
Illustration by Gabriela Pesqueira / The Atlantic. Source: Weirong Xu / 500px / Getty.
