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.
A Capital Crime
The American Scholar
LETTERS
New Leader, Old Troubles
Desert Time
Gaining Immunity
POETRY EXCERPT
PROGRESS REPORT
Joyas Voladoras • Revisiting an ode to the heart by one of our best-loved writers
This Man Should Not Be Executed • BILLY JOE WARDLOW MURDERED A MAN, BUT MITIGATING FACTS SAY HE SHOULD NOT PAY FOR THAT CRIME WITH HIS LIFE
The Greatest Sexual Revolution • HOW WORLD WAR II PREFIGURED THE ’60S
Changing Trains • IN STUTTGART, IN 1943, MY MOTHER ESCAPED BOMBS FALLING ON THE STATION. HAS HER TERROR EXPRESSED ITSELF IN ME?
The Fantastical Real
Winter Recipes from the Collective
Channeling Emerson • AT WORK IN HIS TIMELESS, SMOKE-SCENTED, GHOST-CRAMMED STUDY AT THE OLD MANSE
A Transcendentalist at Work • THOREAU SPENT HIS LAST DOZEN YEARS IN THIS GARRET, MAKING SENSE OF WHAT HE COULD SEE FROM HIS WINDOWS
Encounters Off the Page • AFTER CONDUCTING 250 AUTHOR INTERVIEWS OVER FOUR DECADES, I’M STILL ENGAGED BUT A LOT LESS AWESTRUCK
A Diviner’s Abecedarian
Bronzes for the Ages • The little-known genius of Bertoldo di Giovanni
Alternate Universes • Quentin Tarantino has, over the course of his career, reimagined the art of filmmaking
Norman Maclean and Me • Advice for living and drinking from the author of A River Runs Through It
Visible Man • An intimate view of a great American writer
History, Alive and Well • A writer’s tour of the Soviet world, 30 years after its collapse
A Biographer Looks Back • A noted practitioner reveals her tricks of the trade
A Founding Class • Two new studies of the man from Monticello
Questions of Inspiration • Should we try to see the poet in her poetry?
The Barber of Language • A new collection from a celebrated prose stylist
Nationalist Anthems • Remembering a time when composers mattered more
Pursuing the White Whale • A briny exploration of Melville’s greatest work
Commonplace Book
AMERICAN PLACES