Harper's Magazine

HARPER’S MAGAZINE, the oldest general interest monthly in America, explores the issues that drive our national conversation through such celebrated features as Readings, Annotation, and Findings, as well as the iconic Harper’s Index.

Harper’s Magazine

LETTERS

EASY CHAIR • The European Question

What does it mean to be Catholic in today’s world?

TEXTUAL DEVIANTS • By Emily Eakin, from The Frenchmen, or My Life in Theory, which was published last month by Penguin Press.

CAPITOL LETTERS • From the titles of bills given backronymic names that have been introduced in the U.S. Congress this year.

THE PUBLISHER ALWAYS RINGS TWICE • From Jérôme Lindon, by Jean Echenoz, which will be published next month by Archipelago Books. Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti.

IMMODEST MOUSE

LESS IS ENOUGH • By Wendell Berry, from the foreword to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, which will be published this month by Counterpoint.

DISTANCE LEARNING

FANNY AND SARAH GO BOATING • By Claire Carusillo, from The Responsible Party, which will be published this month by Henry Holt.

BLACK RAIN • By Kiyoshi Tanimoto, from Hiroshima, 8:15, which will be published this month by the Modern Library. This account, written in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, remained unpublished for eight decades.

COSMO NOT • From the Big Mysteries Survey, a poll of 1,675 physicists that was conducted by the American Physical Society’s Physics Magazine to assess the community’s views on foundational controversies and submitted in May to Cornell University’s openaccess archive arXiv.

BOOKS YOU WILL NOT GET TO • By Brenda Hillman, from Still House in the Desert: An Eco-contemplation, which will be published next month by Wesleyan University Press.

RADICAL REFORMATION • The Catholic Church’s progressive revival

A HAZARDOUS DRAMA

Bizarre, not Bazaar.

A DYING ART • The last of the morticians

BLUE BOWLS • On misreading Doris Lessing

THE SOUND OF WATER

CRAZY QUILT

NEW BOOKS

ALL SHE DREAMED • Alice Coltrane’s dark night of the soul

FINDINGS

Like Harper’s, but ALL science