Twelve stories you won’t want to miss
Spend some time with our list of popular reads from 2024.

Mary Stachyra Lopez

Associate editor

Read through our list of popular stories from 2024, including the tale of a disastrous cruise vacation, a deep dive into why Americans have stopped hanging out, news of a life-changing medical breakthrough, and more.

Your 2024 Reading List

(The Atlantic)

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Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

By Gary Shteyngart

Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out

Too much aloneness is creating a crisis of social fitness.

By Derek Thompson

Remember That DNA You Gave 23andMe?

The company is in trouble, and anyone who has spit into one of its test tubes should be concerned.

By Kristen V. Brown

The Carry-On-Baggage Bubble Is About to Pop

Airplanes aren’t made for this much luggage.

By Ian Bogost

The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending

Anti-Semitism on the right and the left threatens to bring to a close an unprecedented period of safety and prosperity for Jewish Americans—and demolish the liberal order they helped establish.

By Franklin Foer

Seventy Miles in Hell

The Darién Gap was once considered impassable. Now hundreds of thousands of migrants are risking treacherous terrain, violence, hunger, and disease to travel through the jungle to the United States.

By Caitlin Dickerson

Trump: “I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had”

The Republican nominee’s preoccupation with dictators, and his disdain for the American military, is deepening.

By Jeffrey Goldberg

Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula

It’s probably leaching chemicals into your cooking oil.

By Zoë Schlanger

The Real Reason People Aren’t Having Kids

It’s a need that government subsidies and better family policy can’t necessarily address.

By Christine Emba

End the Phone-Based Childhood Now

The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development.

By Jonathan Haidt

The Cystic-Fibrosis Breakthrough That Changed Everything

The disease once guaranteed an early death—but a new treatment has given many patients a chance to live decades longer than expected. What do they do now?

By Sarah Zhang

The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.

By Rose Horowitch

The Week Ahead

  1. Babygirl, a thriller movie about a CEO who embarks on an illicit affair with her much younger intern (in theaters Wednesday)

  2. Nosferatu, a horror film about a young bride who sees disturbing visions and feels drawn to a dark force (in theaters Wednesday)

  3. Season 2 of Squid Game, a dystopian series about contestants who are invited to play deadly versions of children’s games for a big prize (premiering on Netflix on Thursday)

Essay

(Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.)

Humans have become accustomed to a life that’s ever more quantified, with watches and phones that passively track heart rate and steps. Gadgets such as continuous glucose monitors are available to those who seek even more detail. Of course we’d enter the era of the quantified pet, tracking our four-legged companions’ diet, sleep, and exercise just as we do for ourselves.

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