Absolute Power
Asked about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Mohammed bin Salman said, “If that’s the way we did things, Khashoggi would not even be among the top 1,000 people on the list.”
April 2022
In This Issue
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, an inmate advocates for his own death, finding empathy for COVID skeptics, and new fiction by Paul Yoon. Plus Death Be Not Proud, a Beat Generation friendship, lessons from Harry Truman, and more.
Cover Story
Get the digital edition of this issue.
Subscribers can access PDF versions of every issue in The Atlantic archive. When you subscribe, you’ll not only enjoy all of The Atlantic’s writing, past and present; you’ll also be supporting a bright future for our journalism.Features
A Good Man, at One Time
How a Mississippi inmate became an advocate for his own execution
My Father, the Fool
I’d run out of sympathy for COVID skeptics. Then I remembered my father’s stiff neck.
The Book That Unleashed American Grief
John Gunther’s Death Be Not Proud defied a nation’s reluctance to describe personal loss.
Fiction
Nora Hollstein / Connected Archives; Stefan Dotter / Connected Archives Cromer
A short story
Dispatches
Illustration by Oliver Munday. Source: Getty The Grown-Ups Are Losing It
We’ve turned schools into battlefields, and our kids are the casualties.
Benjamin Rasmussen An American Community in 10 Fragments
How one photographer documented the aftermath of Colorado’s Marshall Fire
Culture & Critics
Oliver Munday The Story of Jack and Neal
The friendship that made On the Road—and the Beat Generation—possible
Photo illustration by Alicia Tatone. Sources: Archive Photos / Getty; Independent News and Media / Getty; Paco Elvira / Getty; Rolls Press / Popperfoto / Getty Ireland’s Great Gamble
The country wanted modern prosperity and traditional values. It could only have one.
TJ Rinoski The Goon Squad Gets Old
Do Jennifer Egan’s tricks still work?
Jan Robert Dünnweller What Joe Biden Can Learn From Harry Truman
His approval rating hit historic lows, his party was fractious, crises were everywhere. But Truman rescued his presidency, and his legacy.
Departments
The Atlantic The Commons: ‘Responsible Conservatism Has a Voice and a Future’
Readers respond to our January/February 2022 issue.
Tim Lahan An Ode to Giving People Money
You won’t regret it.
Poetry
Gabriela Pesqueira
