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.

Interlude

The American Scholar

LETTERS

Making a Living Making a Life

Living in Limbo • GIUSI DE LUCA

Finding Our Inner Child

Fashion Forward

Life in Black and White

X • The neutering of the Spanish tongue

Rewilding Our Minds • WHY NATURE IS SO NECESSARY DURING THE PANDEMIC—AND HOW WE REPAY THE DEBT

Of Plagues and Prejudice • WHETHER CHOLERA OR COVID-19, EPIDEMIC DISEASE CAN REVEAL WHAT IS HIDDEN—IN OURSELVES AND OUR SOCIETIES

The Power of Restraint • WE MUST FIND A BETTER WAY TO COMMEMORATE 9/11

POETRY

Washing Feet in Dolpo • ON A MEDICAL MISSION AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD, FINDING A HEALING DOSE OF CHEERFUL STOICISM

Orange You Glad • WHAT’S IT REALLY LIKE TO BE SOMEONE ELSE?

Black Turtlenecks, Hoop Earrings • UNRULY GIRL-POETS IN THE ’50S

Those Two • Translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato In memory of Rofran Fernandes

Wicked Brew

Raising Mank • The Academy Award–winning film about the making of Citizen Kane is really a window into the tumultuous, brutal side of Hollywood’s golden age

The Inheritance of Nations • To what extent does a work of art belong to the people of the world?

Remembering Brad • What a stroke of luck when some of your favorite books were written by one of your dearest friends

E Pluribus Unum? • Our national identity has always been hotly contested

From Mojave to the Moon • The new space race looks to put the superrich into orbit

Lessons in Abstraction • The strange life of Europe’s most overlooked modernist

Deep-Rooted Communities • Our woods are connected by a hidden underground network

Physics for the Feeble-Minded • A crash course on our boundlessly bizarre universe

Companions Through Time • A writer traces the footsteps of an Italian revolutionary icon

Commonplace Book

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS • If you’re dead or fictional, we’re the dating service for you!