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.

Transitions

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Single Origin or Bust • The quest of the modern connoisseur

A Voice From Beyond • Can we sense our loved ones when they’re gone?

Mullet Street • On New Orleans’s most famous thoroughfare, it’s always 1986

When ‘All-Inclusive’ Is Anything But • What’s to become of a modest, beloved vacation retreat?

FROSTIANA

Melville’s Chowder • In search of a 19th-century recipe

The RECIPE

After the Flood

Ulysses at 100

It Happened One Day in June • Why Ulysses is as vital as ever— compelling, complex, and direct

WRITERS on ULYSSES

The Believer • When nobody would touch Joyce’s manuscript, Sylvia Beach stepped in

WRITERS on ULYSSES

Ter Conatus • Reading Joyce in a minor key

WRITERS on ULYSSES

For the Joy of Joyce • Abandon the notion of high-minded seriousness and simply enter into the novel’s flow

Know Me Come Eat With Me • In the world of Ulysses, food turns out to be everything

WRITERS on ULYSSES

WRITERS on ULYSSES

The Bomb Next Door • Eighty years into the atomic age, U.S. nuclear power reactors have produced several million tons of radioactive waste—and we still have no idea how to dispose of it

The Lions and the San • How could a people survive for thousands of years with so many predators in their midst?

Stanzas From a Locked-Down World • FORM, FRAGMENT, AND MEMORY IN THE LYRICS OF TERRANCE HAYES

Three Poems

A Remembrance of Places Both Empty and Full • The divine, stark photographs of Robert Adams

Last Rites and Comic Flights • A funeral in a 1984 Japanese film offers moments of slapstick amid the solemnity

Polish Lessons • Four decades ago, a young American found himself in Warsaw during turbulent, extraordinary times

Confessions of a Cyclist • Traversing New York City on two wheels can be both life-affirming and perilous

This Is Your Face

Death in Yashinovka

SHE WAS THE TOAST OF THE WORLD • The dramas and diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay

CALIFORNIA SCHEMING • Has one of the 20th century’s greatest unsolved crimes finally been cracked?

MORALS, MEANING, AND NONSENSE • Ethical inquiry requires lived experience, not just logical examination

WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP IT WAS • The explosive writer who created worlds alien and mundane

DIFFERENT PEOPLE, DIFFERENT STORIES • On the complexities of lumping psychiatric patients into categories

Life & Times • Biographies from Haus Publishing

SUBATOMIC INSPIRATION • The enigmatic thinker behind the Large Hadron Collider

MORE THAN A ‘MERE ECHO’ • English versions of foreign literature must stand on their own

A WHALE OF A STORY • The parallel lives of Moby-Dick’s creator and the historian who rescued him from obscurity

Commonplace Book

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