To Stop a Shooter
Why would an armed officer stand by as a school shooting unfolds?
March 2024
In This Issue
To stop a school shooter, the case of the contested Basquiats, uncancel Woodrow Wilson, and start-up cities. Plus Michael R. Jackson, the despots of Silicon Valley, Raina Telgemeier, the James Bond trap, “Africa & Byzantium,” Marilynne Robinson, and more.
Cover Story
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A Trove of ‘Lost Basquiats’ Led to a Splashy Exhibition. Then the FBI Showed Up.
Why is it so hard to root out fakes and forgeries?
How a Playwright Became One of the Most Incisive Social Critics of Our Time
The subversive vision of Michael R. Jackson
Meet Me in the Eternal City
Silicon Valley has always dreamed of building its own utopias. Who’s ready to move in?
Uncancel Woodrow Wilson
Despised as a racist by today’s left and a tyrant by today’s right, the 28th president championed a set of values that our politics sorely lack.
‘The Magic of Raina Is Real’
How the cartoonist Raina Telgemeier, the author of Smile, Sisters, and Guts, turned the anxious kid into a hero for the 21st century
Dispatches
Illustration by Ben Kothe. Source: Gerard Julien / AFP / Getty. The Rise of Techno-authoritarianism
Silicon Valley has its own ascendant political ideology. It’s past time we call it what it is.
Ernest Cole, Untitled, 1967–72, from "Ernest Cole: The True America" (Aperture, 2024). © 2024 Ernest Cole Family Trust. Lost Photographs of Black America
A trove of images from the 1960s and ’70s, discovered in a Swedish bank vault, offers new perspectives on the past—and the present.
Culture & Critics
Illustration by Paul Spella. Sources: Express Newspapers / Getty; Fototeca Gilardi / Getty. The James Bond Trap
Ian Fleming created the superspy—and then couldn’t get rid of him.
Illustration by Lucas Burtin A Big-Box-Store Allegory
A satirist of literary Brooklyn now explores life in an upstate shopping warehouse.
Courtesy of the Met The Disorienting Beauty of ‘Africa & Byzantium’
A landmark exhibition offers a new history of art.
Elizabeth Hart Marilynne Robinson Makes the Book of Genesis New
In her hands, scripture becomes a precursor to the novel.
Departments
The Atlantic The Commons: The Nation Still Needs a New Birth in Liberty
Readers respond to our December 2023 issue.
The Atlantic Caleb's Inferno: March 2024
A devilish crossword puzzle
Poetry
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Rapp Halour / Alamy.
