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.
The American Scholar
Viral Days
LETTERS
A Fragile Peace
WORKS IN PROGRESS
Journey Interrupted
What Time Is It? • A history of the world in one year
Looking Back From the End of the World • WHAT THOREAU CAN TEACH US ABOUT LIVING LIFE DURING—AND AFTER—THE PANDEMIC
The Patriot Slave • THE DANGEROUS MYTH THAT BLACKS IN BONDAGE CHOSE NOT TO BE FREE IN REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA
Guardian of the Glaciers • AS CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS THE FUTURE OF THE HIMALAYAS, MIGHT THE MOUNTAINS’ SALVATION LIE IN ENDOWING THEM WITH LEGAL RIGHTS?
The Freedom in Confinement
FIVE SONNETS
Adrift in Sunlit Night • WHEN SEARCHING ST. PETERSBURG FOR THE SHADOWS OF DOSTOYEVSKY, GOGOL, AND PUSHKIN, THE BEST STRATEGY MAY SIMPLY BE TO GET LOST
Camouflage • RECALLING A PAST OF SOUND AND SILENCE, AND SECRETS THAT COULD NEVER BE TOLD
Stitches in Time • A MEDITATION ON NEEDLEPOINT AND MORTALITY
Alpharetta
Two Prophets and an Angel • Looking back at one of Raphael’s most compelling studies, on the 500th anniversary of his death
Words Preserved Against a Day of Fear • Remembering Joseph Brodsky
How We Came Together • America purchased its sense of itself at a high price
A Lifelong Habit of Being • Exploring a fundamentally ambiguous attribute
Our Feathered Friends • They aren’t the intellectual lightweights we take them for
The People’s Gallery • A collection that is the brightest light in a city full of them
Mysterious Inheritance • A new biography of the founder of population genetics
Commonplace Book
AMERICAN PLACES