Table of contents for December 18, 2017 in TIME Magazine

EACH YEAR, WE BEGIN THE PROCESS OF CHOOSING the Person of the Year—this is the 91st time we have done so—with a late-September meeting of the staff. The nominations are varied and the debates vigorous, never more so than in this moment of extreme disruption. Nearly one year in, President Trump has dramatically changed the way the Executive Branch functions and altered U.S. relationships with allies and adversaries. Chinese President Xi Jinping, having consolidated internal power to a degree not seen in decades, made clear that his country is prepared to assume the mantle of world leadership. Kim Jong Un, the mysterious totalitarian leader of North Korea, escalated global tensions by testing increasingly powerful missiles, the latest capable of reaching Washington. Then, on Oct. 31, I walked into a windowless…

JANUARY JAN. 8 La La Land First film to win seven Golden Globe Awards JAN. 25 Dow Jones industrial average First time trading above 20,000 FEBRUARY FEB. 6 Queen Elizabeth II First British monarch to reach a Sapphire Jubilee, marking 65 years on the throne MARCH APRIL APRIL 17 Neil Gorsuch First day on the bench as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice MAY JUNE JUNE 18 Pakistan First-time winner of the International Cricket Council Champions Trophy, after beating rival India JULY AUGUST AUG. 21 Solar eclipse First to cross the continental U.S. since 1918 SEPTEMBER SEPT. 18 Lena Waithe First African- American woman to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series SEPT. 25 U.S. Marine Corps First female officer graduates from Infantry Officer Course OCTOBER NOVEMBER…

1. WONDER WOMAN Gal Gadot’s character—part savage warrior, part idealistic naïf—packed riveting contradictions and plenty of charisma into her first full-length screen outing (and Justice League too). She also powered Wonder Woman to more than $800 million globally, proving just how many people had been waiting for a superhero like her. 2. PENNYWISE The shape-shifting clown made his onscreen debut over 25 years ago. But Bill Skarsgard added even more menace to Stephen King’s creation, revealing new layers of fangs and a more-monstrous-than-ever appetite. It is now the highest-grossing R-rated film ever, with excitement building for the planned 2019 sequel—bad news for clowns, who reported losing work thanks to Pennywise 2.0. 3. OFFRED In 1985, when Margaret Atwood’s first published The Handmaid’s Tale, her protagonist’s reality—watching her free society…

IT BECAME A HASHTAG, A MOVEMENT, A RECKONING. BUT it began, as great social change nearly always does, with individual acts of courage. The actor who went public with the story of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s “coercive bargaining” in a Beverly Hills hotel suite two decades earlier. The strawberry picker who heard that story and decided to tell her own. The young engineer whose blog post about the fratboy culture at Silicon Valley’s highest-flying startup prompted the firing of its founder and 20 other employees. The California lobbyist whose letter campaign spurred more than 140 women in politics to demand that state government “no longer tolerate the perpetrators or enablers” of sexual misconduct. A music superstar’s raw, defiant court testimony about the disc jockey who groped her. The galvanizing actions…

ON MAY 17, THE U.S. DEPART MENT OF Justice gave Robert Mueller a mission at once simple and daunting: investigate the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election; uncover any coordination between Moscow and members of Donald Trump’s campaign; and prosecute any crimes that were committed in the process. Since Mueller took up that task, the special counsel has held the country in his thrall. Backed by an independent budget, rare bipartisan support and a team of veteran cops and prosecutors, he has made news even when he tried not to. Loose-lipped lawyers for Trump and his associates leaked details of the probe to the media. Scraps of evidence made their way into public view from separate investigations in Congress. And the President, not known to…

THE FIRST MAN WONDER WOMAN EVER sees, at least in the record-setting movie version of her story, is a fighter pilot. He crashes, she saves him, and that sets in motion her departure from the safe all female island she grew up on. The first man director Patty Jenkins ever saw was also a fighter pilot: her father William Jenkins. He also crashed, during a combat-training exercise when Patty was 7 years old. He was not saved, and she grew up in her own tribe of Amazons—with her feminist mother and two sisters. The parallels between the director and the subject of the most lucrative superhero origin story in history don’t end there. Jenkins is also related to a god: in her case, it’s acting deity Richard Burton, her father’s…

1. BETTER THINGS, FX There’s something elemental about Better Things. Its protagonist Sam—played by Pamela Adlon, the show’s co-creator, who directed every episode of the second season—is exhausted by being a single mother, a woman trying to keep an acting career going after 40, a person. Sometimes she lashes out; sometimes she just sits and thinks, but she is mesmerizingly alive throughout. The organizing events of contemporary American life—parenting, finding love, settling into a career—have for Sam, as for so many, come with no small share of angst. That Adlon illuminates this story, somehow makes it funny and shoots it through with hope and love makes Better Things TV’s very best show in, and for, a challenging year. 2. BIG LITTLE LIES, HBO This miniseries came into focus as a…

1. WHAT HAPPENED, HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON Clinton offers one answer to the question that rang collectively from more than 65 million voters on Nov. 9, 2016. The writing is frank, reflective and a piece of modern history. 2. WE WERE EIGHT YEARS IN POWER, TA-NEHISI COATES Coates enhanced this collection of columns for the Atlantic with fresh material, both personal and historical, to re-examine eight pieces of writing during the eight years of Obama’s presidency from the standpoint of living under the Trump presidency. 3. KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, DAVID GRANN Grann’s retelling of the systemic murder of the Osage tribe of Oklahoma—wealthy for their oil holdings, and wanted dead for the same reason—is a shameful story of the past that feels all too relevant. “The end of Flower…

9 “Beware of the so-called safety of disappearing in 10 seconds!” RICHARD MANSBACH of Erie, Colo., reacting to our March 13 story about the tech company Snap and its disappearing-message app 16 “There are people reaching high, and bringing us up with them.” SARAH DESCHAMPS of Naples, Fla., on the TIME 100 19 “Until there is proof [Russia] has influenced or is influencing the man who now resides in the White House, I believe he deserves to have the same respect that I gave a person when I had to make an arrest.” RETIRED SEATTLE POLICE SERGEANT JOY A. MUNDY on Massimo Calabresi’s May 29 story about Russia’s use of social media to influence Americans 23 “For all the smarts the tech industry has, I can think of nothing dumber…

HEADWEAR Women’s March pink pussy hats FILTER Snapchat’s dancing hot dog TOKEN Monopoly’s discontinued thimble CONDIMENT McDonald’s coveted Szechuan sauce PORTRAIT Beyoncé’s pregnancy announcement CROCKERY Get Out’s hypnotizing teacup HARDWARE Apple’s upgraded iPhoneX INSTA-TREAT Starbucks’ Unicorn Frappuccino DISPOSABLE Trump’s tossed paper towels ACCESSORY Solar-eclipse sunglasses OUTFIT Rihanna’s Comme des Garçons dress at the Met Gala APPAREL Tom Brady’s stolen Super Bowl jersey STATIONERY The Oscars’ botched Best Picture envelope SNACK Halo Top’s low-calorie ice cream…

THE SHOW OFTEN STARTS BEFORE dawn. With a flicker of anticipation or a feeling of dread, people around the world roll over in bed, fumble for their phones and learn whether one of the most powerful people on the planet has tweeted. It’s an uncanny kind of intimacy. He tells us what he’s watching on television, what grudges he’s nursing and what he wants us to think. This is life during the presidency of Donald Trump. By the traditional measures of presidential influence—legislation passed, policies enacted, visions projected onto the world—Trump has used his first year in office to considerable effect. He has backed out of multilateral trade deals and edged closer to nuclear confrontation with North Korea. He has appointed a Supreme Court Justice who thrilled conservatives and is…

FOR A LONG TIME, FOREIGN INTELLIgence services knew very little about the weird world of North Korea. Occasionally, their seismic monitors would pick up signs of rudimentary nuclear tests deep in the mountains north of the capital, Pyongyang. Or military satellites would detect the launch of missiles, short- and medium-range, many of which either failed spectacularly or hurtled harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean. But for the most part, the outside world was suffering from what Donald Gregg, a former U.S. intelligence officer and diplomat in South Korea, calls “the longest-running failure in the history of American espionage.” In 2017, we learned what we’d been missing. Over the course of the year, Kim Jong Un, the youthful, totalitarian leader of the pariah state, unveiled an advanced capacity to threaten the American…

1. THE POST Steven Spielberg was finishing another movie when producer Amy Pascal sent him a script by an unknown writer named Liz Hannah about the Washington Post’s risky 1971 decision to publish the Pentagon Papers. The movie Spielberg made from that script, completed in less than a year, is both rapturously entertaining and pointedly topical. Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks are marvelous as Post publisher Katharine Graham and executive editor Ben Bradlee, who put their paper and their careers on the line to strike a victory for freedom of the press. This movie’s belief in the power of journalism is a head rush. There is no more galvanizing, or more important, film this year. 2. LADY BIRD This smart, joyous, tender film about an out-of-sorts teenager (a superb Saoirse…

1. CTRL, SZA From relative obscurity, New Jersey artist SZA (pronounced like the cutting tool) rose to prominence with witty songs marked by gorgeously sparse R&B production and ironclad melodies; there’s a reason stars like collaborator Rihanna and labelmate Kendrick Lamar are fans. Her takes on hookup culture and the pursuit of an authentic life are vividly articulated too. As with all the best artists, her experience is so specific that it rises to the level of universality: she may be one of a kind, but she’s speaking the truth of a whole generation. 2. DAMN., KENDRICK LAMAR California rapper Lamar came through with the most scathing—and necessary— hip-hop of the year on the insistent, incisive DAMN. “Humble.,” the album’s biggest hit, is raw and repetitive, but that minimalism is…

1. SWEAT In awarding Lynn Nottage the Pulitzer Prize for Drama this year, the board called Sweat “a nuanced yet powerful drama that reminds audiences of the stacked deck still facing workers searching for the American Dream.” The gritty story was informed by the playwright’s research in Reading, Pa., and hailed for its sympathetic portrayal of the working class. Where a lesser writer might have gotten preachy, Nottage presciently explored forces that led to President Trump. 2. COME FROM AWAY In the history of musical theater, air-traffic control post- 9/11 has to be one of the least likely topics for a feel-good hit show. Yet ripped from history’s footnotes, Come From Away is set in Gander, Newfoundland, where 38 jets were grounded following the Sept. 11 attacks. The local townsfolk…

FEBRUARY ‘What ... does she have to do to win Album of the Year?’ ADELE, objecting after her album 25 beat Beyoncé’s Lemonade at the Grammys MARCH ‘I am sorry that I could not finish the presidential duty that was entrusted to me.’ PARK GEUN-HYE, former President of South Korea, after being removed from office on charges of corruption and abuse of power ‘I have one client. It’s the law.’ NEIL GORSUCH, Supreme Court Justice, promising to keep politics and other outside influences from entering into his judgments, during a confirmation hearing APRIL ‘This is not my fault … but I’m taking responsibility.’ JA RULE, rapper and co-founder of Fyre Festival, after poor planning forced organizers to cancel the music event, leaving many attendees stranded in the Bahamas ‘EVERYONE SAID…

JAN. 11 Las Vegas launches a selfdriving- shuttle pilot program on a section off its famous Strip, part of an effort to convince consumers that self-driving vehicles are safe FEB. 10 Ford invests $1 billion in self-driving software startup Argo AI, roughly one month before Intel acquires a similar startup, Mobileye, for $15 billion MARCH 10 California reverses a rule that required human backup drivers in autonomous vehicles, a landmark change in the country’s largest auto market APRIL 10 Tesla valuation nears $51 billion on news of its first mass-market electric car (the $35,000+ Model 3), temporarily surpassing GM as America’s most valuable automaker MAY 22 Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler announces plans to build a $600 million battery factory in an effort to meet growing demand for electric vehicles JULY 6…

SOMETIMES THINGS JUST SEEM TO GO your way. In 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping strengthened his hold over the world’s most populous nation, was inducted into the pantheon of party leaders beside Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping and—small detail—announced that China henceforth intends to lead the world. He mentioned this deep into an Oct. 18 speech that ran beyond three hours, which begins to account for why so audacious a declaration drew relatively little notice. But then it also came after the President of the United States had signaled time and again over the previous 10 months that America might be surrendering the top spot. Drama requires conflict. This felt more like process. Donald Trump posted an unexpected vacancy, and China readied its application for the slot. ‘IF YOU WERE…

COLIN KAEPERNICK LAST PLAYED IN AN NFL game on Jan. 1. But over the past 11 months, he’s exerted more influence on American society than any of the stars lighting up television screens on Sundays. A silent protest that began in 2016, when Kaepernick started kneeling during the national anthem to call attention to police brutality and racial injustice, grew into a social movement that highlighted the nation’s cultural divide, roiled powerful institutions from the NFL to the White House, and forced us all to grapple with difficult questions about protest, patriotism and free speech—issues many would rather ignore, let alone face as part of their weekend entertainment. As the controversy mushroomed this year, Kaepernick declined to speak about his role, but paid a heavy price for taking on the…

1. SAOIRSE RONAN In Greta Gerwig’s bittersweet coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird, Ronan plays Christine, a Sacramento teenager who’s had it with everything: her complex, cranky mother; her low-on-the-totem-pole social status; her really-not-so-bad Catholic school. But as Ronan plays her, you feel for Christine every minute, even when she’s being totally impossible. Beneath all that free-radical exasperation, her face is radiant, open and alive. 2. TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET When, exactly, does adolescence flip to adulthood? The moment is as fleeting as the silvery flash of a minnow. Yet it’s that moment that Luca Guadagnino captures in his lush, ardent coming-of-age romance Call Me by Your Name, and Chalamet, one of his two lead actors, gives that almost inexpressible point of passage a human face. As 17-year-old Elio, Chalamet is equal parts youthful…

1. SING, UNBURIED, SING, JESMYN WARD Ward’s third book set in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, based on her hometown of DeLisle, Miss., conjures the same raw emotion of her previous works, like the Hurricane Katrina novel Salvage the Bones. But this time, a sense of magical realism deepens the ghostly sense of the past reaching out to touch—or even strangle— the present. Ward’s novel is a true triple threat, expert in prose, human observation and social commentary. 2. WHITE TEARS, HARI KUNZRU The British novelist skewers American culture in this treatise on whiteness and cultural appropriation. Two young white men breaking into the music industry find success when they record random noises in a New York City park and discover the voice of a man who wasn’t there.…

THE OUTRAGES AND ALLEGATIONS FLASH THROUGH my brain like a nasty, ludicrous slide show of twisted male power. Harvey Weinstein and his potted plant. Charlie Rose and his flapping bathrobe. Roy Moore and the cowboy-booted mall trolling he denies. Louis CK and his humid phone. Matt Lauer and his Bond-villain door bolting. Al Franken and his giddy grabs. I’d like to scrape up some sense of triumph over the fact that many courageous women have raised their voices. But I don’t feel triumphant. I feel humiliated and angry. They hate us. That’s my immediate thought, with each new revelation: They hate us. And then, a more sick-making suspicion: They don’t care about us enough to hate us. We are simply a form of livestock. No, not all men, and not…