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.

Speech

LETTERS

The Lady and the Monk

When the Well Runs Dry

A Stinging Decline

Neighborhood Watch

Citizenship Prep

News or Not?

The Grape Escape

Her Too • A daughter calculates the cost of her mother’s electrical career

Stress Test for Free Speech • SOCIAL MEDIA ARE DESTROYING THE DEMOCRATIC CULTURE THAT THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS MEANT TO PROTECT

Finding Time • GEOCHRONOLOGISTS ESTABLISH PRECISE DATES FOR EVENTS THAT OCCURRED EONS AGO

Best Ways to Get a Date

Dangerous Ground • WHEN CONFRONTING MATTERS OF RACE, SOME BOUNDARIES ARE MORE EASILY BREACHED THAN OTHERS

FOUR POEMS

Present Tense • EVEN IN THIS INTERMINABLE DRUGSTORE LINE, MY DAUGHTER’S LAST SUMMER BEFORE COLLEGE IS SLIPPING BY FAR TOO QUICKLY

My Family’s Siberian Exile • A WRITER PIECES TOGETHER THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF LIFE IN STALIN’S SPECIAL SETTLEMENTS

The END of LITERATURE • EVEN IF WRITING IS REDUCED TO TWEETED EPIGRAMS TO KEEP READERS READING, WON’T WRITERS STILL TELL STORIES?

I Live for the Night

Fit the Description

Visual Music • Is it possible to “hear” a painting as if it were a fugue by Bach?

Bringing In the Horse • Virgil’s account of the sacking of Troy has similarities to the political situation of our day

The Loyal Opposition • A timely new biography of an avatar of courage and bipartisanship

A Poet in Purgatory • An inside look at a literary marriage that ended in disaster

The Runaway Question • How people fleeing bondage helped transform the nation

The House for the Soul • Investigating the rhythmic beat at the center of our lives

Lives of the Artists • The vistas and losses of two great English painters

A Proximity to Greatness • How a reclusive writer’s work came to be published

Commonplace Book

AMERICAN PLACES