Page 2 | Harper's Magazine

History and criticism

American Scolder

From annotations written by John Stuart Mill on his personal copies of the first editions of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays, which were published in two volumes, in 1841 and 1844.…

Poetry Slam

by Mark Edmundson,

Or, The decline of American verse

Little Bang Theory

by Pierre Schaeffer,Translated by John Dack,

From In Search of a Concrete Music, by composer Pierre Schaeffer (1910–95), published last year for the first time in English by University of California Press. Published in French in…

Aretha

by Anthony Heilbut,

How she got over

Heart of snarkness

by Harper’s Staff,

The decline of gossip

by Joseph Epstein,

Never, Again

by Harper’s Staff,

From letters rejecting Art Spiegelman’s Maus, sent by editors at publishing houses to his agent in 1983. MetaMaus, a collection of interviews and documents about the development and publication of…

Radisson confidential

by Jonathan Lethem,

Death by icicle

by Patrick Dacey,

The confessions of Glenn Beck

by Thomas Frank,

The writer is gravely ill

by Roberto Bolaño,Translated by Chris Andrews,