Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99 per year.
Subscribe for Full Access

Six Questions

One question more than five; twelve fewer than eighteen.

My Pain Is Worse Than Your Pain— The Film Adaptation

Filmmaker Adam Hall on capturing the dark magic of a T. C. Boyle short story

Read more

This Is Running for Your Life: Essays

Michelle Orange on the art of the personal essay, navigating cultural overload, and the distance that separates two human heads

Read more

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Alex Gibney on his documentary investigating the Roman Catholic Church's handling of child sex-abuse cases

Read more

Three Poets: “The Halls of Aspartame”

Timothy Donnelly on writing challenging verse, the cultural faith bred by 30 Rock, and the poet’s need to reach for the eternities

Read more

Jungleland: A Mysterious Lost City, a WWII Spy, and a True Story of Deadly Adventure

Christopher S. Stewart on his epic hunt for Honduras???s lost White City

Read more

D For Deception

Tina Rosenberg on the British spy novelist who hoodwinked Hitler

Read more

Unruly Voices: Essays On Democracy, Civility and the Human Imagination

Mark Kingwell on fugitive democracy, the cultural role of philosophers, and hockey-borne Canadian anti-intellectualism

Read more

Let Me Clear My Throat

Elena Passarello on the animal appeal of the human voice and the art of the lyrical essay

Read more

Bet the Farm

Six Questions for Frederick Kaufman

Read more

Am I a Jew?: Six Questions for Theodore Ross

Theodore Ross discusses the history and evolution of American Judaism and recounts his attempt to reconcile with his childhood alienation from his Jewish heritage.

Read more

Boss Rove: Six Questions for Craig Unger

After four years in the political penalty box, Karl Rove has returned as the undeniable mastermind of the G.O.P.’s electoral effort. Vanity Fair contributing editor Craig Unger has just published…

Read more

Four New Messages: Six Questions for Joshua Cohen

Joshua Cohen’s new story collection, Four New Messages, was published on August 7 to wide and deserved acclaim. The book’s four independent but stylistically and thematically harmonious stories are an…

Read more

Privacy: Six Questions for Garret Keizer

We live in a world in which the private space we are afforded seems to be constantly shrinking. Travelers are subjected to ever-mounting indignities at airports, and those who turn…

Read more

Great Games, Local Rules: Six Questions for Alex Cooley

Alex Cooley Through much of modern history, Central Asia has been a borderland between great empires that vied for influence within it. This came to an end with the Soviet…

Read more

Private Empire: Six Questions for Steve Coll

Measured by revenue, ExxonMobil is the largest corporation on earth. Its operations span the globe, and it behaves like a powerful sovereign, exercising immense influence over the governments of the…

Read more

Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune: Six Questions for Christoph Wolff

The last years of Mozart’s life and the prodigious and important works he created during them have been heavily romanticized in the musical literature. Now, one of this generation’s leading…

Read more

Magic Hours: Six Questions for Tom Bissell

After more than a decade spent writing on subjects as diverse as Uzbekistan, the Iraq War, and video-game voice-overs, Tom Bissell published his sixth book, a collection of some of…

Read more

The Art of Intelligence: Six Questions for Henry Crumpton

Henry Crumpton spent twenty-four years in the CIA’s clandestine service. His work put him at the forefront of the agency’s counterterrorism efforts, and on the front lines as America took…

Read more

A Sense of Direction: Six Questions for Gideon Lewis-Kraus

The last time Harper’s Magazine readers saw Gideon Lewis-Kraus was in 2009, when he diagnosed the diseases of the publishing world at the Frankfurt Book Fair and infiltrated the community…

Read more

Six Questions for Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka is the author of two novels, When the Emperor Was Divine and The Buddha in the Attic, the latter of which was recently awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for…

Read more

Framed: Six Questions for Sanford Levinson

The American Constitution has been the subject, just as Thomas Jefferson predicted, of a great deal of “sanctimonious reverence,” especially from American politicians who make comments demonstrating they know little…

Read more

Traitor: Six Questions for Jesselyn Radack

Jesselyn Radack came into the Justice Department through the Attorney General’s Honors Program and worked as an ethics adviser until she found herself embroiled in a scandal that arose because…

Read more

Unimaginable Atrocities: Six Questions for William Schabas

A successfully completed prosecution in the International Criminal Court, new demands for investigations into atrocities in Syria, ongoing issues surrounding crimes committed by American officials during the Bush-era “war on…

Read more

Every Nation for Itself: Six Questions for Ian Bremmer

The world is quickly being reshaped, writes political economist Ian Bremmer. America established itself as the paramount power following the collapse of Communism, but the emerging system is one in…

Read more

The Crisis of Zionism: Six Questions for Peter Beinart

Peter Beinart, a former editor of The New Republic who now writes for the Daily Beast and teaches at the City University of New York, has just published a remarkable…

Read more

Six Questions for Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman is a professor of physics and humanities at MIT, and the author of novels, poems, and such essays as “The Accidental Universe: Science’s crisis of faith” (December 2011),…

Read more

The Man Without a Face: Six Questions for Masha Gessen

Vladimir Putin is emerging as an iconic figure for Russian politics in the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he remains rather mysterious even at home, and…

Read more

Pity the Billionaire: Six Questions for Thomas Frank

Thomas Frank’s Pity the Billionaire: The Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right is the first full exploration of the rise of a new kind of false…

Read more

Close
“An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media landscape.” —the New York Times
Subscribe now

Debug