Gal Beckerman is an author and a staff writer at The Atlantic. His latest book is HOW TO BE A DISSIDENT.
Before coming over to The Atlantic, whose books section he also ran, he was an editor at the New York Times Book Review for six years. He also served as the opinion editor at the Forward newspaper and a staff editor and writer at the Columbia Journalism Review. His writing has appeared in a number of places over the years, including the Washington Post, The New Republic and Bookforum.

His previous books include The Quiet Before, which was a New York Times Notable pick in 2022, and When They Come for Us We’ll Be Gone, which won two major book awards and was chosen as a book of the year by The New Yorker and the Washington Post.

Over the years he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, lived in Berlin as a German Chancellor Fellow with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and broke his arm almost in half while biking across France.  

We spoke with him via Zoom on May 18, 2026.

Articles pertinent to this interview:

Our show with U. of MD Law Professor, Leigh Goodmark, from 2023 is about women in US prisons for murdering their abusers. https://forthright.media/2023/03/09/leigh-goodmark-imperfect-victims-criminalization-and-the-promise-of-abolition-feminism/

Trump and His Advisers Clearly Haven’t Actually Read Thucydides https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/opinion/trump-xi-iran-war.html

Sarah Wynn-Williams and Virginia Giuffre jointly win freedom to publish prize at British book awards https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/11/sarah-wynn-williams-and-virginia-giuffre-jointly-win-freedom-to-publish-prize-at-british-book-awards

A mask can’t hide you from God’: can you shame an ICE agent into quitting? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/16/ice-agents-quit

I.R.S. to Drop Audits of Trump and Family https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/trump-irs-doj-lawsuit-audit.html

Exclusive: FBI Files Counter Government Argument om Texas “Antifa” Trial https://inthesetimes.com/article/prairieland-antifa-trial-protest-repression-fbi