The Atlantic

The Books Briefing: Escaping the Confines of Adult Supervision

Your weekly guide to the best in books
Source: Karen Kasmauski / Corbis / Getty

Subscribe to our Books Briefing email newsletter, where every Friday, you’ll receive a newsletter like the one below, containing a selection of timely criticism, literary essays, reading recommendations, and more. Sign up here.

When we asked you last week about the childhood books that you still think about, we had an outpouring of responses, both from readers of this newsletter and . Many people described how the stories they grew up on shaped their understanding of the world: taught you new ways to use your imagination; showed you skills such as teamwork and resourcefulness; and guided you through puberty. Some books fostered a lifelong love of animals, and others

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic5 min readAmerican Government
What Nikki Haley Is Trying to Prove
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. Nikki Haley faces terrible odds in her home state of
The Atlantic8 min readAmerican Government
The Most Consequential Recent First Lady
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. The most consequential first lady of modern times was Melania Trump. I know, I know. We are supposed to believe it was Hillary Clinton, with her unbaked cookies
The Atlantic3 min read
They Rode the Rails, Made Friends, and Fell Out of Love With America
The open road is the great American literary device. Whether the example is Jack Kerouac or Tracy Chapman, the national canon is full of travel tales that observe America’s idiosyncrasies and inequalities, its dark corners and lost wanderers, but ult

Related