In the March issue: What ISIS wants, among the Hillary haters, pregnancy and job stress, why the British are better at satire, and more

What ISIS Really Wants, Among the Hillary Haters, Should You Bring Your Unborn Baby to Work?, and more...

 

This Month from The Atlantic

March 2015

What ISIS really wants, the plan to beat Hillary, how job stress may be harming unborn babies, atheist superstitions, the best ad campaigns ever, how the love song conquered all, and more

Cover Story

What ISIS Really Wants

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

GRAEME WOOD

Features

Among the Hillary Haters

Can a new, professionalized generation of scandalmongers uncover more dirt on the Clintons—without triggering a backlash?

HANNA ROSIN

Should You Bring Your Unborn Baby to Work?

Research shows that babies are more sensitive to the prenatal environment than once believed. How should today's stretched-to-the-brink parents respond?

MOISES VELASQUEZ-MANOFF

The Hero Europe Needed

A quarter century after the Velvet Revolution, VáclavHavel's legacy is in disarray. His life illuminates a dissident generation's dreams and the revenge that history has taken on them.

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF

Dispatches

Be Not Afraid

When President Obama tells Americans to stop worrying, he’s accused of fecklessness. But he has a point: we have never been safer.

JONATHAN RAUCH

The Science of Superstition

No one is immune to magical thinking.

MATTHEW HUTSON

The Bluest Republican

Why staunchly Democratic Massachusetts loves its new GOP governor

MOLLY BALL

Happy Meals

Can San Francisco reinvent the school cafeteria?

KIERA BUTLER

Mind the Gap

As more U.K. publications woo U.S. readers, British and American English are mixing in strange, sometimes baffling, ways.

SOPHIE GILBERT

The Miracle of Minneapolis

No other place mixes affordability, opportunity, and wealth so well. What’s its secret?

DEREK THOMPSON

Block That Sperm!

The future of birth control, from remote-controlled implants to—at long last—a pill for men

OLGA KHAZAN

Mystery Killers

How can we save lives if we don’t understand what threatens them?

JEREMY N. SMITH

Noisy Old People

Grandmothers are creating a ruckus in China's public spaces.

BONNIE TSUI

The Hell of Helsinki

A very short book excerpt

MICHAEL BOOTH

The Culture File

Endless Love

A new book suggests that the love song has always been among the most revolutionary of musical forms.

JAMES PARKER

The Book of Sorrow and Forgetting

Kazuo Ishiguro, master of buried secrets, on losing the past

NATHANIEL RICH

The Secret History of the Underground Railroad

Eric Foner explores how it really worked.

ADAM GOODHEART

The Genius and Excess of John Berryman

A centennial revival of too much of his work risks dooming America's poet of many voices to oblivion.

CHRISTOPHER BENFEY

Rust Never Sleeps

America’s losing fight against the insidious enemy within

TIM HEFFERNAN

Why the British Are Better at Satire

Political mockery thrives on a more cynical spirit thanVeep and the American House of Cards can muster.

CHRISTOPHER ORR

Passion Plays

Kirstin Valdez Quade’s theatrical new short-story collection

ANN HULBERT