New releases from Atlantic Editions: <em>On Heroism</em>, by Jeffrey Goldberg, and <em>On the Housing Crisis</em>, by Jerusalem Demsas

Today is the publication date for two new books from Atlantic Editions, an imprint of The Atlantic and the independent publisher Zando: On Heroism: McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump, by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic and host of Washington Week on PBS; and On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy, by Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer and host of the new Atlantic policy podcast, Good on Paper.

Both books are available to buy at local bookstores and online, and are the tenth and 11th titles in the Atlantic Editions collection. Previous editions are by Elizabeth Bruenig, Lenika Cruz, Caitlin Flanagan, Megan Garber, Sophie Gilbert, Spencer Kornhaber, Jennifer Senior, Derek Thompson, and Kaitlyn Tiffany and Lizzie Plaugic.

More on both titles is below.

On Heroism

With On Heroism, Goldberg expands on his explosive reporting about former President Donald Trump’s contempt for and repeated disparagement of military service members—a story he broke exactly four years ago to the day—a preoccupation that reveals the extent to which Trump is grossly unfit to serve. Goldberg paints a portrait of a president whose impulse is to dismiss acts of heroism because he is incapable of understanding sacrifice and selflessness. Along the way, he shows what actual American character and leadership look like, drawing upon decades of his own reporting and interviews with top officials such as the late Senator John McCain, former Defense Secretary James Mattis, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

These men stand in contrast to the many who came to support Trump after long opposing him. As Goldberg writes in an introduction: “Across Washington, men and women without honor had made this awful compromise. Even after we as a country learned so much more about Donald Trump—about his un-American contempt for the Constitution, about his long history as a sexual miscreant, about his oft-spoken desire to deploy the U.S. military against Americans, and about his unnatural love of dictators from Pyongyang to Moscow—Washington was filled with people who had made their peace with this man, for low, contemptible reasons. John McCain once told me that he liked to think that ‘in the toughest moments I’d do the right thing, but you never know until you’re tested.’ Over the past eight years, too many people have failed the test.”

On the Housing Crisis

On the Housing Crisis offers a rigorously reported anthology on how local politics have fueled a generation-defining national emergency. In these essays, Demsas focuses on the ways in which Americans have ceded the power over how our land is used to local politics. She writes that “this system has resulted in stasis and sclerosis, empowering small numbers of unrepresentative people and organizations to determine what our towns and cities look like and making it impossible for our democratically elected representatives to plan for the future.”

“These essays show the need to move the politics of land into the domain of democratic participation instead of leaving it to the zoning boards, historic-preservation committees, and courtrooms,” she writes. “The people who decide what gets built—or doesn’t get built—in America should be accountable to the public, should have to justify their decisions, and should stand ready to win or lose elections as a result.” Demsas explores these topics in her writing and in the podcast Good on Paper, a show that challenges popular narratives on policy and politics.

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