HARPER’S MAGAZINE, the oldest general interest monthly in America, explores the issues that drive our national conversation through such celebrated features as Readings, Annotation, and Findings, as well as the iconic Harper’s Index.
Harper's Magazine
LETTERS
EASY CHAIR • Death Valley
THE MOTHERSHIP • By Mark McGurl, from Everything and Less, which will be published next month by Verso. A version of this essay appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of American Literary History.
MACHINE YEARNING • From “Sex with Robots: Therapeutic Challenges and Opportunities,” an online lecture presented by Markie Louise Christianson Twist, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Stout, and hosted by the International Online Sexology Supervisors.
MATH ROCK • By Richard Powers, from “One, Two, Three… Infinity,” an essay in the anthology Ways of Hearing, which will be published this month by Princeton University Press.
APOCALYPSE NOUNS • From words that describe environmental phenomena that have entered colloquial usage since the Fifties, identified by the writer Isaac Pearlman.
LATE EDITION • By Heinrich von Kleist, from Anecdotes, a collection of vignettes that originally appeared in Kleist’s newspaper Berliner Abendblätter, which began publication in 1810. Kleist took his own life the following year. The collection will be published next month by Sublunary Editions. Translated from the German by Matthew Spencer.
FAUCIAN BARGAIN • From vaccination incentives offered by governments and businesses around the world this year.
ABOUT FACE • From “Stories to Black-and-White Sketches by Alex Katz,” written by Alexander Kluge in response to drawings by the artist Alex Katz. Translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole and Wieland Hoban.
IMMIGRANT SEA • By Forrest Gander, from Twice Alive, a poetry collection, which was published in May by New Directions.
FAN MAIL • From emails sent to the City of Oakland last year about a wild peacock living in a North Oakland neighborhood. The records were obtained by Adrien Salzberg at MuckRock.
MOMENTS OF SILENCE • By Vince Passaro, from Crazy Sorrow, a novel, which will be published this month by Simon and Schuster.
LIFE ALERT • From design images for The Third Eye, a robotic eye developed by Min-Wook Paeng, an industrial designer and student at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. The eye beeps to alert people of obstacles while they are walking and looking at their phones.
THE 500-YEAR-OLD STURGEON • From “Fish in a barrel: Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus) from the Baltic Sea wreck of the royal Danish flagship Gribshunden (1495),” by Stella Macheridis et al., which appeared in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.
BAD NEWS • Selling the story of disinformation
IN THE DARK
WORLD OF NIGHT • On September 11, 2001, Hale Gurland, a helicopter pilot, multidisciplinary artist, and sculptor with expertise in welding, rushed to Ground Zero with his torches, tanks, and gauges. Working nights and sleeping days, Gurland aided in the search-and-rescue efforts, pausing occasionally to record images. Over the course of four days, Gurland exposed just five rolls of film.
“America’s MOST INTERESTING MAGAZINE” HARPER'S
WHEN THE RAIDS CAME • The war’s toll on one Afghan family
THE PORTRAIT GALLERY • What the American Academy of Arts and Letters taught me about death
EATING THE WHALE • A personal history of meat
THE THIRD FORCE • On stupidity and transcendence
THE BOOK OF BREEZES
WOMEN CORINNE DOES NOT ACTUALLY KNOW
NEW BOOKS
BOSTON GOTHIC • Atticus Lish’s novel of illness, masculinity, and murder
DEEDS OF DERRING-DO •...