The American Scholar

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous speech, The American Scholar is the quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932.

Revisionism Revised

The American Scholar

LETTERS

A Burning Problem

Following the Music

Unlocking Prison Problems

The Girl Diving

Sowing the Grain Revolution

Ten Sights (I Wish I’d Seen) • Purple ocean’s majesty, the dodo, and other wonderful things

Moral Courage and the Civil War • MONUMENTS ASK US TO LOOK AT THE PAST, BUT HOW THEY DO IT EXPOSES CRUCIAL ASPECTS OF THE PRESENT AND HAS AN INESCAPABLE EFFECT ON THE FUTURE

Ref lections on a Silent Soldier • AFTER THE TELEVISION CAMERAS WENT AWAY, A NORTH CAROLINA CITY DEBATED THE FUTURE OF ITS TOPPLED CONFEDERATE STATUE

The Crisis of University Research • ACADEMIA’S PURSUIT OF CORPORATE AND GOVERNMENT DOLLARS HAS UNDERMINED ITS COMMITMENT TO LEARNING

The Gathering Storm

Count

I Send a Birthday Wish to My Friend Brian Doyle

Required Reading • SOMETIMES TEACHERS NEED TO REACH BEYOND THE CANON

New World Prophecy • DVOŘÁK ONCE PREDICTED THAT AMERICAN CLASSICAL MUSIC WOULD BE ROOTED IN THE BLACK VERNACULAR. WHY, THEN, HAS THE FIELD REMAINED SO WHITE?

How I Learned to Talk • CONVERSATION ONCE OFFERED ENTRY INTO OTHER PEOPLE’S MINDS. HAS THAT DISAPPEARED?

Sin

Chalking It Up • The ideas Michelangelo committed to paper were themselves glimpses of heaven

Head Cases • Field notes on a beautiful friendship

The Great Convergence • How continental art and literature went global

Image Is Not Everything • A definitive portrait of a celebrated American intellectual

Spirits in the Material World • Two new books consider the past and present of Christendom

He Contained Multitudes • Exploring the psychology of an iconoclastic architect

How We Work • An anatomical tour of what it means to be human

Downsized Living • Escaping the city, a writer finds contentment in a small town

Commonplace Book

AMERICAN PLACES