From the Magazine

John Lewis likes to remind supporters to never give up. In January 1977, after President Jimmy Carter appointed then U.S. Rep. Andrew Young to be ambassador to the United Nations, Lewis joined a dozen candidates vying to replace Young. Come election night, Lewis lost to fellow Democrat Wyche Fowler. “Two months ago, nobody knew who John Lewis was. This is only the beginning.” Elected to the House in 1986, Lewis began his 17th term in January.

Theodore Vail, the president of AT&T, had hoped to be alongside Alexander Graham Bell in New York when the inventor made the first transcontinental call to his trusted assistant, Thomas Watson, sitting 3,400 miles away in San Francisco. Hobbled with a leg injury on Jekyll Island, where he and other titans of industry escaped hard northeast winters, Vail instead participated from a parlor in the Jekyll Island Club as J.P. Morgan Jr. and William Rockefeller stood nearby.

Soul Food Cypher's One Hundred is one of 26 events the seven-year-old organization hosts each year that aim to turn hip-hop artists into community leaders by building camaraderie, encouraging collaboration, and providing a platform.

Throughout metro Atlanta, about 5,000 nonprofits strive to make their communities stronger. Helping out can be as simple as tutoring from your office computer or as deep as committing to a long-term mentorship. Whether your priority is the cause, the location, or the schedule, here are some worthwhile organizations that depend on volunteers.

On January 14, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal hands the keys to Brian Kemp and will settle in Habersham County, where he and his wife, Sandra, will retire. He looks back at criminal justice reform, the issue that brings him to tears, why he didn’t expand Medicaid, the religious liberty bill, and the importance of baby steps.

With war on the horizon in the early 1940s, the country needed B-29 Superfortress bombers to fight Nazi Germany, and it needed them fast. A group of boosters from Cobb County pitched the perfect site: a cotton farm and field of trees in Marietta. The investment turned Cobb, until then a sleepy suburb, into an economic powerhouse.

Across the country, deaths of pedestrians are nearing historic highs, and Georgia and metro Atlanta are no different. According to the Atlanta Regional Commission, the number of collisions involving pedestrians and bicyclists in the 20-county metro region has risen sharply, from nearly 1,700 in 2006 to more than 2,500 in 2015—a 53 percent increase.

Instead of mourning after the demise of Churchill Grounds, many of Atlanta's jazz musicians began playing music throughout the city. There are now 10 weekly jam sessions at venues inside the perimeter, placing Atlanta on comparable footing with more jazz-forward cities like Seattle.

At libraries around the metro area, shelves full of newly released books are held on reserve, waiting for impatient readers. Author visits at the Margaret Mitchell House, Wren’s Nest, or the Atlanta History Center are often packed; book clubs are springing up everywhere; and literary events like the AJC Decatur Book Festival and the Book Festival of the MJCCA bring national authors to our doorstep. Here are a few of our favorites from this year’s releases.

In the male-dominated stand-up comedy world, Lace Larrabee is making sure women are a force to be reckoned with by launching Laugh Lab, the only stand-up comedy class in Atlanta that’s exclusively for women. She also role in the new Catherine Zeta-Jones comedy Queen America, which debuts this month on Facebook Watch.