Breaking From The News

Now, a break from the news

Romulo Yanes for The New York Times. Food styling: Vivian Lui.

Cook: Try chicken schnitzel with smashed, spiced cucumbers. (Our Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter has more recommendations.)

Watch: The directors Anthony and Joe Russo narrate a scene from “Avengers: Endgame” featuring a beer-guzzling Thor, played by Chris Hemsworth.

Go: Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s opera “Das Wunder der Heliane” has premiered in America nearly a century after it was written. See it at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., through Sunday.

Read: Book reviews in our archives written by some of the biggest names in literature, including Nora Ephron, Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut.

Smarter Living: It was once common practice for drivers to flash their headlights at oncoming vehicles that had their high beams on. But using headlights to communicate is a practice that can vary by region and might not always send the intended signal, experts say. Here are some tips.

And we’ve worked with the experts at Wirecutter, a Times site, to compile a list of back-to-school essentials.

And now for the Back Story on …

The glass ceiling

Six female candidates are vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, but almost no one is talking about the “glass ceiling.”

The term dates from 1978, when female employees at Hewlett-Packard and the New York Telephone Company used it to describe their inability to rise beyond the ranks of middle management. Betty Friedan, a founder of the National Organization for Women, told The Times in 1986 that it described women who “get to a middle level and then there’s a glass ceiling — not overt discrimination, just a feeling that you can go this high and no higher.”

The Democratic presidential candidates include, front row from left: Marianne Williamson, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard and Kirsten Gillibrand.  Travis Dove for The New York Times

Hillary Clinton made the phrase a staple of her presidential campaigns and noted after her 2016 loss that the U.S. still had not shattered that “highest and hardest glass ceiling.”

The 2020 candidates are using other language: Kamala Harris prefers to talk about her willingness to “break things,” while Elizabeth Warren has vowed to “persist.”

“Words have their moments, especially colloquialisms,” the linguist Robin Lakoff told The Times, noting that glass ceiling “seems tired.”

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Mr. Ginsu