An excerpt from issue 134 of The Atavist Magazine.
America
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Best of 2022: Reader Favorites
You’ve heard from the Longreads’ editors, now it’s the turn of our readers.
Posted inEditor's Pick
When a Full-time Job Isn’t Enough
“Those days of working one job and sustaining a household on one income — those days are long gone.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Noncompliant Heart
“Why was I chosen to lead the Pledge of Allegiance? My heart demands an answer to this question.”
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The Humiliating History of the TSA
“I don’t really recognize the America that exists at a TSA checkpoint. It is overly paranoid, vindictive, and unaccountable to us as citizens.” Since 9/11, there isn’t really evidence that shows the Transportation Security Administration has made air travel any safer for passengers. For The Verge, Darryl Campbell dives into two decades of unnecessary security check […]
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Slave Money Paved the Streets. Now This Posh RI City Strives to Teach Its Past.
Between 1700-1850, the city of Newport in tiny Rhode Island launched more slave trading voyages than anywhere in North America. And in a time when conservative school boards and state leaders around the U.S. are banning lessons about race and racism in schools, Newport is confronting its past: teaching students local Black history, African heritage, […]
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A Year of “Protecting Children” in Texas
In the days after the Uvalde school shooting, Christopher Hooks looks at how the government has failed the children of Texas, focusing on banning books and demonizing transgender kids rather than working on ways to keep children safe. How can anyone be expected to live this way, let alone a fifth grader? We should remember […]
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The Death Spiral of an American Family
In this heartbreaking portrait of one American family, Eli Saslow offers a look at “backwards mobility” and the country’s collapsing middle class. It had been almost a month since Dave, 39, found his father lying unresponsive in bed next to his cellphone and a bill from a collections agency, having died of a heart attack […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Black Vanguard in White Utopias
“Country music issues a promissory note to its white listeners. The promise is that no matter how much the world around them may be changing, a country radio station or concert will be a safe space for white sentimentality.”
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“They Took Us Away From Each Other”: Lost Inside America’s Shadow Foster System
“It would take years before Molly and Heaven would learn that neither of them was ever in the foster system. Instead, caseworkers had diverted them to what some scholars call ‘hidden foster care’ or ‘shadow foster care,’ in which the legal protections of the formal system disappear.”