Seven Summer-Weekend Reads
NEWS | 26 August 2025
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. On this late-summer weekend, read stories on what having a crush can teach you about yourself, the rise and fall of computer-science degrees, and how, exactly, America got so mean. There Are Two Types of Dishwasher People And only one of them really knows how to load it. By Ellen Cushing How America Got Mean In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world. (From 2023) By David Brooks The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting Artificial intelligence is ideally suited to replacing the very type of person who built it. By Rose Horowitch Buy, Borrow, Die How to be a billionaire and pay no taxes By Rogé Karma A Ticking Clock on American Freedom It’s later than you think, but it’s not too late. By Adrienne LaFrance Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change. (From 2021) By Caitlin Flanagan A Crush Can Teach You a Lot About Yourself There’s no harm in fantasies, even if you know they’ll never come true. (From 2023) By Faith Hill The Week Ahead The Roses, a comedy movie about a seemingly perfect couple whose hidden tensions explode after the husband’s career falls apart (out Friday in theaters) Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, a three-part documentary following the stories of Hurricane Katrina survivors (out Wednesday on Netflix) Katabasis, a novel by the best-selling author R. F. Kuang about two graduate students who must set aside their rivalry and journey to hell to save their professor’s soul (out Tuesday) Essay Illustration by Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Source: Getty. What Claire’s Once Gave Tween Girls By Ellen Cushing Mostly, I remember the fluffy pens. When I was in elementary and middle school, nothing could be cooler than a fluffy pen, at least until it got covered in backpack grime and started to look like an exceptionally long-tailed subway rat. And no place had fluffy pens in abundance like Claire’s, a chain that sold accessories and other trinkets and, at the time, seemed to exist in every shopping center in America. Mine had an entire wall of fluffy pens, in every color, usually for some kind of absurd deal that allowed even a child to feel the intoxicating rush of acquisition. This was what Claire’s was for. It was a temple to girlhood, a place where everything was frivolous and where tooth-fairy money could make dreams come true. Read the full article. More in Culture Catch Up on The Atlantic Photo Album The wooden Kiruna Church is being transferred three miles to a new location in Kiruna, Sweden. (Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP / Getty) These photos show a huge, 113-year-old Sami-style Lutheran church in Kiruna, Sweden, being transported three miles from its original site. Explore all of our newsletters.
Author: Rafaela Jinich.
Source