Author: Michelle Korhonen
On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he was removing General Valerii Zaluzhny from command of the military, and promoting General Oleksandr Syrsky, the head of the ground forces, to replace him. Predictably and understandably, there has already been a great deal of hand-wringing about Ukraine’s president cashiering his top general. Such concern is misplaced, not merely because it may be misinformed, but because it bespeaks a misunderstanding of sound civil-military relations.Begin with what is actually known rather than rumored or surmised about the president and his general: that there has been tension for some time, possibly for as…
In 1922, a musicologist imagined how future historians might judge the day’s jazz cynics.Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: PhotoQuest / GettyFebruary 8, 2024, 12:09 PM ETThis is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.The year 1922 was an auspicious moment for America’s greatest original art form: A young cornetist named Louis Armstrong left New Orleans for Chicago to join King Oliver’s band, and the dowdy old Atlantic undertook its first efforts to make sense of the new musical genre known as jazz.To explain the fresh…
“Conflict-related sexual violence” is as old as the Bible and as topical as current wars around the world. We talk to three experts about why it persists, why it’s underreported and how to stop it.
In the spring of 1993, Mercury Records put three of its new country signees on a bus and sent them on a 15-city tour intended to raise their profile. It was a hell of an assemblage. There was the troubadour John Brannen, who possessed a rootsy sound and a quaver that channeled Roy Orbison’s. He alternated opening and closing slots with a former Oklahoma oil-field worker and semi-pro defensive end named Toby Keith. Playing in between was a brassy Canadian from a hardscrabble background: Shania Twain. It was Twain, in fact, who ran screaming to the front of the bus…
In late 2021, Tom Suozzi made an announcement that exasperated Democratic Party leaders: The third-term representative would give up a reelection bid for his highly competitive New York House district to mount a long-shot primary challenge against Governor Kathy Hochul.Suozzi got trounced, but the ripple effects of his ill-fated run extended far beyond his Long Island district. Democrats ended up losing their narrow majority in the House, in part because the seat Suozzi vacated went to a little-known Republican named George Santos. He’s not so little-known anymore. Nor is he in Congress, having been expelled in December after his colleagues…
That’s the adjective used by the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Immunization Division. Can the world bring this outbreak under control?(Image credit: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP)
Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.“How do you write a book?” Like most authors, I get this question often. Sometimes, I find that the person is asking about overcoming specific obstacles, such as getting started (answer: first spend three months talking about your idea to anyone who will listen) and how to deal with writer’s block (answer: lower your self-imposed standards and just get words down). But sometimes, underlying the question is a more general curiosity or concern about how to do a really big thing…
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.For years, the NFL balked at even a whiff of gambling—and kept Las Vegas at a distance as a result. But as the league has become more open to gambling, it has also embraced the city synonymous with it.First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:In the Shadow of the StripPeople are betting on just about anything these days. But something few would have…
Virginia lawmakers are considering bills that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to patients with terminal illnesses who’ve been given a prognosis of six months or less to live.
Last year, a funny thing happened at Ring Concierge’s Manhattan showroom. A bride-to-be brought her engagement ring back to the popular jewelry store after wearing it for a few weeks and wanted to trade out her diamond for a worse one. The woman was worried that the original rock was too clear, too bright, too perfect for its large size, Ring Concierge’s CEO, Nicole Wegman, told me. She wanted to replace it with a lower-quality stone of a similar size—something a little less bright white.Brides sometimes bring in new rings for tweaks; maybe they want the fit adjusted, or they’re…