The Atlantic’s July Issue: How to Tell the American Story

For its July issue, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the United States, The Atlantic considers how to tell the American story, with contributions from its staff writers and editors, including Yoni Appelbaum, Ian Bogost, Sally Jenkins, Idrees Kahloon, Adrienne La France, Helen Lewis, Jake Lundberg, Clint Smith, and Caity Weaver. In an editor’s note for the issue, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg writes: “You will see in this issue (and, I hope, in everything we do) that our journalists are engaged in worthwhile struggles with the meaning, promise, achievements, and shortcomings of our singular nation … The ambition of The Atlantic’s founders was that this magazine would be the preeminent home for arguments about the American idea, and that we would endeavor to tell the truth about the grandness of America as well as its imperfections. That ambition animates this issue—and all of our journalism.” On the cover, The Atlantic is publishing Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which was written for The Atlantic and first ran in the February 1862 issue. In an accompanying piece, staff writer and in-house historian Jake Lundberg unearths the history of the “Battle Hymn”––written to prepare the Union and its soldiers for the terrible fight ahead––and what it says about America itself. Lundberg writes that the poem is both an explication of the promise of America and an exhortation to persevere on behalf of the country. The “Battle Hymn,” Lundberg argues, is our unofficial national anthem, one more relevant through the ages than the actual anthem. “By the time of the Great Depression,” he writes, “the ‘Battle Hymn’ had achieved a truly national character. The song’s stature is such that it can be used to make a statement in a way that the official anthem never can.” In a feature published today, deputy executive editor Yoni Appelbaum examines the tortured debate—inside and outside the academy—over how to tell the American story. He writes about the speci