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Articles

New Books

In the nineteenth century, while the European novel was becoming the preeminent narrative form for grown-ups working through the grown-up problems of marriage, adultery, and career, Americans were writing adventure…

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My App Runneth Over

From posts to Instapray, an app that allows users to post and request prayers. God, please help me overcome my Internet addiction. It is ruining my life. Who wants to…

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Family Tradition

From Lynching in America, a report published in February by the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, that litigates on behalf of indigent and marginalized defendants.

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Copy Cats

From “Taking Animal News Seriously: Cat Tales in the New York Times,” a study by Matthew C. Ehrlich, a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, published…

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The Craft Talk

By Rae Armantrout, from the January/February 2015 issue of The Believer. Armantrout is the author of many collections of poems, including Itself, published by Wesleyan University Press in February.

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First Responders

From tweets by companies alluding to current events between 2011 and 2014. @KennethCole Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available…

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From the Palo Alto Sessions

By Joshua Cohen, from Book of Numbers, out next month from Random House. Cohen is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. Toward the end D-Unit had been working on the…

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Lunar Phrases

From references to the moon in poems by Frank Stanford (1948–1978), who was best known for his epic poem The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. Stanford’s selected…

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Municipal Bonds

From a class-action lawsuit filed in February against the city of Ferguson, Missouri, for excessively fining and imprisoning residents for minor infractions. In March, the Department of Justice concluded that…

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Spirit Guide

From a list of Thai ghosts, compiled by Andrew Alan Johnson, an assistant professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore and the author of Ghosts of the New City, published last…

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The Torment and the Engine

From an interview in the Spring 2015 issue of The Paris Review. Elena Ferrante is the pseudonym of an Italian novelist whose books include The Days of Abandonment, My Brilliant…

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Black Hat, White Hat

By Masha Gessen, from The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, out last month from Riverhead Books. Gessen is the author of several books, including The Man Without a…

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For Something to Do

Past Howell, he kept the speedometer needle at seventy for almost six miles, until he was in sight of the mailbox. Then he eased his foot from the accelerator, braked,…

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Harper’s Index

Number of years in the past decade in which the violent-crime rate in the United States has fallen : 8 In which the majority of Americans have believed that crime is on…

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Beyond the Broken Window

William Bratton and the new police state

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In Search of a Stolen Fiddle

From the pawnshops of Portland to the con men of Craigslist

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Letters

Port Authority Annie Murphy’s “The Day of the Sea” [Letter from La Paz, February] neglects to mention the Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed by Bolivia and Chile in 1904.…

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Displaced in the D.R.

A country strips 210,000 of citizenship

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The Day of the Knotweed

Battling Britain’s most destructive invasive plant

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Findings

Psychologists warned against treating autism with antifungals, antivirals, bleach enemas, camel’s milk, chelation, chiropractic, craniosacral therapy, dolphins, extended breast-feeding, Floortime, gluten- and casein-free diets, horses, hyperbaric oxygen, hypnotherapy, magnetic shoe…

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The Quietest Place in the Universe

Digging for dark matter in an abandoned mine

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An Artist of the Sleeping World

Long years ago I gave pain by saying, with the arrogance of boyhood, that it was foolish to tell one’s dreams. I have done penance for that remark since. .…

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Ways of Being Silent

from the archive 50 years ago in Harper’s Magazine Literary history and the present are dark with silences: the years-long silences of acknowledged greats; the ceasing to publish after one…

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May 2015

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