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For your weekend reading list, our editors compiled seven stories. Spend time with articles about what ketamine does to the human brain, the political fight of the century, and more. 
A century ago, a German sociologist explained precisely how the president thinks about the world.
By Jonathan Rauch
His Daughter Was America’s First Measles Death in a Decade
A visit with a family in mourning
By Tom Bartlett
What Ketamine Does to the Human Brain
Excessive use of the drug can make anyone feel like they rule the world.
By Shayla Love
The ‘Exciting Business Opportunity’ That Ruined Our Lives
Amway sold my family a life built on delusion.
By Andrea Pitzer
Where Jeff Bezos Went Wrong With The Washington Post
The billionaire handled his ownership admirably for more than a decade. But his courage failed him when he needed it most.
By Martin Baron
The Political Fight of the Century
For the first time in decades, America has a chance to define its next political order. Trump offers fear, retribution, and scarcity. Liberals can stand for abundance.
By Derek Thompson
Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene
Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change.
By Caitlin Flanagan (From 2021)
Catch Up on The Atlantic
This week, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that the Trump administration inadvertently added him to a discussion of a military strike on Houthi militias in Yemen, conducted over the encrypted messaging app Signal. Catch up on the story and some of our writers’ analysis here:
The Week Ahead
- A Minecraft Movie, a live-action film based on the best-selling video game (in theaters Friday)
- The Bondsman, a horror-action show starring Kevin Bacon as a resurrected bounty hunter who must find the demons that escaped hell (premieres Thursday on Prime Video)
- Pathemata, or, the Story of My Mouth, a book by Maggie Nelson detailing her diaries about a decade of dreams and jaw pain (out Tuesday)
Essay
The Paradox of Hard Work
By Alex Hutchinson
To say that long-distance runners embrace difficulty is to say the obvious. When you watch many thousands of people happily push themselves through a race that they might not even be allowed to finish, though, you start to get the hint that something deeply human is going on. People like things that are really hard. In fact, the enormity of a task often is why people pursue it in the first place.
More in Culture
Photo Album
Take a look at some of the global and regional winning entries of this year’s World Press Photo Contest.
Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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