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This was the year of Dune: Part Two, of the highest-grossing stadium tour of all time, of Wicked and Deadpool & Wolverine, of Beyoncé’s country-music album, of new works of fiction and nonfiction that proved genuinely surprising, of standout television (even amid an overload of mediocre reboots). Below, our writers and editors offer their picks for the best culture of the year.
Best of the Year
The Atlantic 10: The Books That Made Us Think the Most This Year
By Ann Hulbert, Boris Kachka, and Jane Yong Kim
Each of our 10 [picks] is a triumph of alchemy, deriving insight from fresh combinations of dismay and delight, tragedy and comedy, mourning and hope … The feature that distinguishes all of these titles—or any book worth cherishing—is the surprising experience of reading them.
By David Sims
Hollywood seems to be shifting away from the superhero industry, following decades of reliable box-office domination, but the next trend has not yet emerged. I’m heartened, though, by the broad swath of genres and storytelling approaches of my favorite movies this year, made by a mix of rising filmmakers and established figures.
By Sophie Gilbert, Hannah Giorgis, and Shirley Li
Whether they transported us to another century or dropped us in the middle of a high-stakes work environment, these are the series that kept our hope for TV’s creative future alive.
By Spencer Kornhaber
Pop stars and punks alike are … saying exactly what they feel, exactly how they want to say it. Although my top picks span a variety of genres, many of them have a similar spewing quality. They play like glorious run-on sentences, full of oversharing and id.
By Marnie Shure
This list represents the 20 best podcasts I heard this year, with a lean toward either new shows, or shows that have a renewed focus. Virtually all of them, even the most entertaining and quirky ones, suggested an underlying preoccupation with the power of narrative to shape our sense of reality.
Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
Essay
No One Has to Settle for Bad Pizza Anymore
By Saahil Desai
In pizza heaven, it is always 950 degrees. The temperature required to make an authentic Neapolitan pizza is stupidly, unbelievably hot—more blast furnace than broiler. My backyard pizza oven can get all the way there in just 15 minutes. Crank it to the max, and the Ooni Koda will gurgle up blue flames that bounce off the top of the dome. In 60 seconds, raw dough inflates into pillowy crust, cheese dissolves into the sauce, and a few simple ingredients become a full-fledged pizza.
Violinists have the Stradivarius. Sneakerheads have the Air Jordan 1. Pizza degenerates like me have the Ooni. I got my first one three years ago and have since been on a singular, pointless quest to make the best pie possible.
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