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.

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The American Scholar

LETTERS

Thank you, friends! • THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR thanks the following people for their financial support in 2021.

A City Beyond Savings

Salt of the Earth

Sanctioning the Silver Screen

The Beginning of the End

The Country & the Country • Were Americans ever really together?

2022: A Space Emergency • WITHOUT INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS, WE ARE MAKING THE HEAVENS DANGEROUSLY CROWDED AND POTENTIALLY LETHAL

Women’s Burden • WE LIKE TO THINK THE PAINFUL SACRIFICES OUR MOTHERS MADE ARE IN THE PAST. BUT ARE THEY?

American Mandarins • DAVID HALBERSTAM’S TITLE THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST WAS STEEPED IN IRONY. DID THESE PRESIDENTIAL ADVISERS EARN IT?

Voicing the Ineffable

FIVE POEMS • Rae Armantrout

The Last Naturalist • A ZOOLOGIST HAPPIEST IN THE FIELDS AND STREAMS OF OHIO WROTE MAJOR WORKS ABOUT THE STATE’S BIRDS AND FISHES

The Scar on the Hand • WRITERS AND THE EARLY LOSS OF PARENTS

Searching for Tommy and Rosie • WHAT MY MOTHER’S DIARIES TOLD ME ABOUT HER LIFE AND MY OWN

Safer Than Childbirth • ABORTION IN THE 19TH CENTURY WAS WIDELY ACCEPTED AS A MEANS OF AVOIDING THE RISKS OF PREGNANCY

On Aging • TAKING MEASURE OF A LIFE WELL LIVED

The Constancy of Things

Frightfully Askew • What asymmetry in art can tell us about the way we view sickness and health, life and death

The Birth of the Egghead Paperback • How one very young man changed the course of publishing and intellectual life in America

Wielders of the Knife • How doctors learned to keep patients alive on the operating table

From Cold War to Y2K • Looking back on a decade that was often dumb but never dull

Where I End and We Begin • A writer reimagines her life by blending it with others

Surviving the Ebb and Flow • The curious creatures that inhabit the ocean’s edge

Making the List • Finding the right page required centuries of experiment

A Name Not Writ in Water • Revisiting an immortal 19th-century English poet

Dollars Versus Degrees • Are business interests alone to blame for global warming?

Commonplace Book

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