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Gal Beckerman

Gal Beckerman

New Republic

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PEN America Is Fighting For Its Life

PEN America has now canceled its annual World Voices festival, after calling off its literary awards ceremony last week. Can it survive? In 2015, PEN...

friday 8

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Bringing a Social Movement to Life

The author Adam Hochschild recommends books that vividly illustrate moments of great change. This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’...

friday 7

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

An Oblique and Beautiful Book

The Children's Bach is a striking picture of how ravaged a life can be when unmoored from any responsibility, and of how necessary it is to take care...

12.04.2024 10

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Feminism, Womanhood, and Celebrity

The books Sophie Gilbert turns to while writing This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up...

05.04.2024 4

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Obama, the Protagonist

Two literary accounts of the former president’s rise Join Atlantic editors Jane Yong Kim, Gal Beckerman, and Ellen Cushing in conversation with...

29.03.2024 5

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Now Is the Time to Wrestle With Frantz Fanon

Does the patron saint of political violence have anything to teach us today? Some ideas exist so far beyond one’s own moral boundaries that to hear...

28.03.2024 10

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Choosing America’s Greatest Novels

The Atlantic assembled a list of 136 works of fiction that we consider to be the most significant of the past 100 years. This is an edition of the...

15.03.2024 4

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

A Memoir Shouldn’t Boss You Around

Lily Meyer recommends books that recollect personal experience without being prescriptive. This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’...

01.03.2024 5

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

The Strangest Job in the World

Edith Wilson may have been closer to running the country than being a kindly helpmate. This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’...

23.02.2024 4

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

What Adults Forget About Reading

Why my daughters love rereading Raina Telgemeier’s graphic novels When you’re a parent who loves to read—or as the case is for me, happily,...

09.02.2024 5

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

The Human Face of American Decline

Alex Kotlowitz recommends books that manage to operate at a human scale while arriving at bigger truths. Alex Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children...

26.01.2024 8

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

The Literature of Exile

Hisham Matar’s books are part of a long tradition of writing from a place of dislocation. Exile has always served as a powerful engine for fiction....

19.01.2024 7

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Two Jewish Writers, a Bottle of Whiskey, and a Post–October 7 Reality

One hundred days after Hamas’s attack, looking back at a candid and intense late-night talk with two prominent authors, Joshua Cohen and Ruby...

14.01.2024 10

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

The Case for a Credits Section in Books

An author isn’t the only person who brought a finished title to life. My fondness for the acknowledgments section of books runs very deep. Sometimes...

22.12.2023 10

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Our Dramatic Relationship With the Natural World

A 2023 novel that revolved around a character getting lost in the wilderness Nature writing has always been a little unsatisfying to me, I’ll admit....

15.12.2023 3

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

What a Classical-Music Critic Reads

Anthony Tommasini, the former chief classical-music critic for The New York Times, recommends books and music. I love music, but I never learned to...

01.12.2023 2

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Revisiting Hidden Pasts at the National Book Awards

This year, the awards honored books that resurface previously suppressed history. The National Book Awards, a glitzy affair otherwise known as the...

17.11.2023 5

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

The Unabashed Jewishness of Barbra Streisand

In her new memoir, Streisand describes the risks involved in making Yentl. In the history of Hollywood schmaltz, few moments quite beat the sight of...

07.11.2023 10

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

The Film That Best Explains Barbra Streisand

In her new memoir, Streisand describes the risks involved in making Yentl, a movie that was unabashedly feminist and Jewish. In the history of...

07.11.2023 5

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

A Book That Was Like Putting on ‘a New Set of Glasses’

I consider its argument almost every day. The literary internet is full of lists that suggest books that will inform you about one subject or...

03.11.2023 7

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Stop Doomscrolling About Israel and Palestine—Read These Books Instead

The Atlantic’s books editor prescribes these titles as antidotes to the quick and dirty ways people are communicating on social media. The Israeli...

27.10.2023 3

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Etgar Keret Is Searching for Signs of Life

A conversation with the Israeli short-story writer about how his country is grieving, and whether writing can ease the pain The war between Israel and...

27.10.2023 10

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

Beware Euphemism in a Time of War

An open letter signed by famous writers decrying Israel’s response to the Hamas attack shows a startling moral obtuseness. George Orwell is forever...

18.10.2023 8

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

The Left Abandoned Me

After the brutal violence committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians, I looked around for my friends on the left and felt alone. “Did they really...

12.10.2023 10

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

‘The Middle East Region Is Quieter Today Than It Has Been in Two Decades’

A week ago, Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan sounded optimistic about the region. What a difference a week makes. Just eight days ago,...

07.10.2023 3

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

This Week in Books: My 10-Year-Old Adores The Iliad

A new translation of the epic poem plunges us into the world of the ancient Greeks. At my small liberal-arts college, the freshmen were taught on the...

06.10.2023 7

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

This Week in Books: History Scares Authoritarians

A new book looks at the “underground historians” of China who are resurfacing moments from the past that authorities would prefer be forgotten....

29.09.2023 20

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

This Week in Books: The Rare Novel With a Happy Parent

Loved and Missed shows what child-rearing is really like. When my children were very young, friends standing on the precipice of parenthood would ask...

22.09.2023 3

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

This Week in Books: Should We Still Read ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’?

A conversation with Clint Smith on the moral complexity in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous book. Uncle Tom’s Cabin , first published to colossal...

15.09.2023 5

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

This Week in Books: Sylvia Plath Continues to Fascinate

Her life is still being unpacked 60 years after her death. Sylvia Plath lived only to the age of 30—this year marks the 60th anniversary of her...

08.09.2023 5

The Atlantic

Gal Beckerman

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