The New Reconstruction
The United States has its best opportunity in 150 years to belatedly fulfill its promise as a multiracial democracy.
October 2020
In This Issue
Making America again: The new Reconstruction, America’s plastic hour, and the flawed genius of the Constitution. Plus disaster and the modern city, Donald Judd, Black mayors remaking the South, Claudia Rankine, Hillary Rodham Clinton on women’s rights, and more.
Cover Stories
America’s Plastic Hour Is Upon Us
The country is at a low point. But we may be on the cusp of an era of radical reform that repairs our broken democracy.
The Flawed Genius of the Constitution
The document counted my great-great-grandfather as three-fifths of a free person. But the Framers don’t own the version we live by today. We do. The document is our responsibility now.
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Get Ready for the Great Urban Comeback
Visionary responses to catastrophes have changed city life for the better.
The True Story of the Married Woman Who Smuggled Her Boyfriend Out of Prison in a Dog Crate
She wanted to escape her marriage. He wanted to escape his life sentence.
The Minimalist Who Wasn’t
I always thought Donald Judd’s work was intimidatingly austere, until I discovered the plenitude at its core.
Dispatches
Arsh Raziuddin Power Shortage
Women’s rights are human rights. But rights are nothing without the power to claim them.
Lauren Tamaki Can Italy Defeat Its Most Powerful Crime Syndicate?
A prosecutor takes hundreds of mobsters to court.
Joshua Rashaad McFadden The New Southern Strategy
How Black mayors in the South are leveraging both the power of office and the power of the street to achieve overdue changes
Asia Pietrzyk Generation Work-From-Home May Never Recover
The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices
Culture & Critics
Illustration by Paul Spella; image from PA Images / Alamy In Search of the First Female Sports Superstar
The remarkable career of the Victorian athletic phenom Charlotte Dod—and the legacy that wasn’t
Cassi Namoda Marilynne Robinson’s Prodigal Son
Her new novel, Jack, explores the loneliest character in her Gilead series and the legacy of race.
Tim Enthoven A New Theory of Western Civilization
Could a marriage policy first pursued by the Catholic Church a millennium and a half ago explain what made the industrialized world so powerful—and so peculiar?
Yael Malka Claudia Rankine’s Quest for Racial Dialogue
Is her focus on the personal out of step with the racial politics of our moment?
Departments
Katie Martin The Commons: The Collaborators
Readers respond to our July/August 2020 cover story and more.
Tim Lahan An Ode to Small Talk
How about this weather?
Poem
Paul Spella / The Atlantic My Industrial Work
By Anonymous Poet From Room 8
