Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene
Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change.
April 2021
In This Issue
Private schools and inequity, fixing the internet, America’s reliance on special ops, and understanding long COVID. Plus new fiction by Paul Yoon, pandemic merch, Beirut after the blast, Kazuo Ishiguro’s radiant robot, Sam Sifton’s no-recipe recipes, and more.
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Unlocking the Mysteries of Long COVID
A growing number of clinicians are on an urgent quest to find treatments for a frighteningly pervasive problem. They’ve had surprising early success.
How to Put Out Democracy’s Dumpster Fire
Our democratic habits have been killed off by an internet kleptocracy that profits from disinformation, polarization, and rage. Here’s how to fix that.
American Special Ops Forces Are Everywhere
They’ve become a major military player—and maybe a substitute for strategic thinking.
Fiction
Asako Narahashi Person of Korea
A short story
Dispatches
Illustration by Paul Spella / Rendering by Patrick White America Without God
As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen. Will the quest for secular redemption through politics doom the American idea?
Photograph by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin What Your T-Shirt Says About You
How merch became a staple of the pandemic
Photo illustration by Rana Salam; images courtesy of the artist After the Blast
Last summer’s explosion in Beirut devastated much of the city. My efforts to repair my apartment reveal a lot about how Lebanon works—and doesn’t.
Illustration by Nicolás Ortega; Joseph-Noël Sylvestre, ‘The Sack of Rome in 410 by the Vandals’ (1890). Fine Art Images / Getty. No, Really, Are We Rome?
History suggests that corrosive change can be hard to see while it’s happening.
Tine Poppe; Institute A Bug’s Life
A walk in the park on a miniature scale
Culture & Critics
Illustration by Oliver Munday; Bernard Gotfryd / Hulton Archive; Bettman; Bob Peterson / The Life Images Collection / Getty The Relentless Philip Roth
In his life as in his fiction, the author pursued the shameful, the libidinous, the repellent.
Vanessa Saba; Rene Johnston; Chris Williamson; Getty What Happened to Jordan Peterson?
Adored guru and reviled provocateur, he dropped out of sight. Now the irresistible ordeal of modern cultural celebrity has brought him back.
Na Kim The Radiant Inner Life of a Robot
Kazuo Ishiguro returns to masters and servants with a story of love between a machine and the girl she belongs to.
Katie Martin When Did Following Recipes Become a Personal Failure?
Sam Sifton’s exciting, but daunting, invitation to improvise
Departments
Katie Martin The Commons: The Most American Religion
Readers respond to our January/February 2021 issue.
Tim Lahan An Ode to Not Meditating
Uncross those aching legs, solemn sitter.
Poetry
Paul Spella / The Atlantic
