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Great Reads

Seven Great Reads

The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › newsletters › archive › 2025 › 02 › seven-great-reads › 681708

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

This Presidents’ Day, spend time with stories on what everyone gets wrong about Tulsi Gabbard, how invisible habits drive your life, America’s “marriage material” shortage, and more.

What Everyone Gets Wrong About Tulsi Gabbard

Other than raw ambition, only one through line is perceptible in a switchbacking political career.

By Elaine Godfrey

How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days

He used the constitution to shatter the constitution.

By Timothy W. Ryback

Growing Up Murdoch

James Murdoch on mind games, sibling rivalry, and the war for the family media empire

By McKay Coppins

History Will Judge the Complicit

Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president? (From 2020)

By Anne Applebaum

Invisible Habits Are Driving Your Life

The science of habits reveals that they can be hidden to us and unresponsive to our desires.

By Shayla Love

America’s ‘Marriage Material’ Shortage

Adults are significantly less likely to be married or to live with a partner than they used to be.

By Derek Thompson

Five Books That Offer Readers Intellectual Exercise

Each of these titles exercises a different kind of reading muscle so that you can choose the one that will push you most.

By Ilana Masad

From the Archives

In 1895, the future 26th president of the United States offered a critique of the spoils system and argued in favor of a nonpartisan and rigorously vetted civil service. “The government cannot endure permanently if administered on a spoils basis,” Theodore Roosevelt wrote. “If this form of corruption is permitted and encouraged, other forms of corruption will inevitably follow in its train.”

Culture Break

Fabio Lovino / HBO

Watch. Can anything satisfy the guests of The White Lotus? In the new season (streaming now on Max), the rich tourists want more, and more, and more, Hannah Giorgis writes.

Read. Imani Perry’s latest book, Black in Blues, examines the intersections between the color blue and the Black experience.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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