Harper's Finest Archives

Sara Jeannette Duncan’s “The Ordination of Asoka” (1903)

by Jeff Sharlet,

A story

Mary McCarthy’s “Artists in Uniform” (1953)

by Jeff Sharlet,

“He actually said these awful things. But the story is McCarthy’s arrangement of the colonel’s utterance of the words and of her changing perception of their meaning.”

Dan Halpern’s “Citizen Walmart” (2012)

by Harper’s Magazine,

The retail giant’s unlikely romance with small farmers

Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (1964)

by Harper’s Magazine,

“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.”

Breyten Breytenbach’s “Mandela’s Smile” (2008)

by Harper’s Magazine,

Notes on South Africa’s failed revolution

Alice Munro’s “Train” (2012)

by Harper’s Magazine,

Our warmest congratulations to Alice Munro, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Wendell Berry’s “Faustian Economics” (2008)

by Harper’s Magazine,

Hell hath no limits

Rebecca Solnit’s “Detroit Arcadia” (2007)

by Harper’s Magazine,

On the possibility of a new Detroit

Robert Littell’s “What the Young Man Should Know” (1933)

by Harper’s Magazine,

Advice for parents about raising their sons

Rafil Kroll-Zaidi’s “Byzantium” (2012)

by Harper’s Magazine,

Their ears were uncircumcised

Wil S. Hylton’s “Broken Heartland” (2012)

by Harper’s Magazine,

The looming collapse of agriculture on the Great Plains

Gary Greenberg’s “Manufacturing Depression” (2007)

by Harper’s Magazine,

“This is the heart of the magic factory, the place where medicine is infused with the miracles of science.”

Harper’s Magazine on the Iraq War (2002–2013)

by Harper’s Magazine,

Tracing our coverage of the war, from Lewis H. Lapham to Andrew J. Bacevich

T. C. Boyle’s “My Pain Is Worse Than Your Pain” (2010)

by Harper’s Magazine,

A classic short story about the desperate acts and philosophical consolations of a middle-aged man who has become romantically obsessed with one of his neighbors.