Some of America’s best reporters and thinkers offer an urgent look at a country in chaos in this collection of timely, often prophetic articles from The Atlantic. The past four years in the United States have been among the most turbulent in our history—and would have been so even without a global pandemic and waves of protest nationwide against police violence. Drawn from the recent work of The Atlantic staff writers and contributors, The American Crisis explores the factors that led us to the present racial division, economic inequality, political dysfunction, the hollowing out of government, the devaluation of truth, and the unique threat posed by Donald Trump. Today’s emergencies expose pathologies years in the making. Featuring leading voices from The Atlantic, one of the country’s most widely read and influential magazines, The American Crisis is a broad and essential look at the condition of America today—and at the qualities of national character that may yet offer hope.
Author
John Cullen Murphy, Jr. (born September 1, 1952) is an American writer and editor probably best known for his work at The Atlantic, where he served as managing editor (1985–2002) and editor (2002-2006). He was born in New Rochelle, New York, and grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was educated at Amherst College, from which he graduated with honors in medieval history in 1974. Murphy's first magazine job was in the paste-up department of Change, a magazine devoted to higher education. He became an editor of The Wilson Quarterly in 1977. Murphy, along with his father, John Cullen Murphy, wrote the comic strip Prince Valiant from the mid 70s to 2004. He is also the author of The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own (1999) and Are We Rome? (2007), which compares the politics and culture of Ancient Rome with that of the contemporary United States. He currently serves as editor at large for Vanity Fair and lives in Massachusetts.
