Page 13 | Harper's Magazine

History

How the Islamic State Was Won

by James Harkin,

Interviews with fighters, enemies, and potential recruits

PBS Self-Destructs

by Eugenia Williamson,

And what it means for viewers like you

“Today Is Better Than Tomorrow”

by Benjamin Busch,

A Marine returns to a divided Iraq

Washington Is Burning

by Andrew Cockburn,

Two centuries of racial tribulation in the nation’s capital

The Other Zionism

by I. F. Stone,

The main current of Zionism has always nourished itself on the illusions that the Jews were “a people without a land” returning to “a land without a people.” But there…

Why We Lost in Iraq and Afghanistan

by Daniel Bolger,

A general’s account of the military’s mistakes

Return of the Strongman

by Negar Azimi,

How did Egypt revert to dictatorship?

Francis and the Nuns

by Mary Gordon,

Is the new Vatican all talk?

The Octopus and Its Grandchildren

by Rebecca Solnit,

When an 1882 cartoon in San Francisco’s Wasp newspaper depicted the Southern Pacific Railroad as an octopus with the whole state of California in its far-reaching tentacles, it launched an…

Severance Package

by Frances Larson,

By Frances Larson, from Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found, forthcoming in November from Liveright.

Armed and Dangerous

by William Pfaff,

The inexorable rise of American militarism