The American Scholar, the magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa Society

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Article

Dishonorable Behavior

The scourge of military sexual assault and the warrior’s masculine code

Elizabeth D. Samet

Smarty Pants Podcast

Love Games and First Impressions

How to judge tennis—or a stranger’s face

Stephanie Bastek

Article

Reading Thoreau at 200

Why is the seminal work of the great American transcendentalist held in such scorn today?

William Howarth

Works in Progress

Chasing Henrietta

Why one novelist keeps returning to the same inscrutable character

Andrea Barrett

Commonplace Book

Summer 2017

Beachcombing, with books

Anne Matthews

When Beethoven Met Goethe

It happened one July in Teplitz

Sudip Bose

View from Rue Saint-Georges Wednesdays

A Kind of Homecoming

Transcending the “other” in art

Thomas Chatterton Williams

Raul Gonzalez

Invisible Immigrants

Noelani Kirschner

Tennis, Anyone?

Obsession and regression

Phillip Lopate

WISE TO THE WORDS

Pause Fillers

Um, like, y’know, sort of, if you catch my drift

Ralph Keyes

Current Issue

Cover Story

Our Nuclear Future

We may think the bomb is back, but it never really went away

Jeffrey Lewis

Waking From the Dream

Most Americans assume society is more egalitarian than it is

Nancy Isenberg

Reading Thoreau at 200

Why is the seminal work of the great American transcendentalist held in such scorn today?

William Howarth

A Legacy in Ruins

What now for Iraq’s Mosul Museum, recently liberated from ISIS?

Cathy Otten

THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

Today we’re pouring one out for the inimitable Jane Austen, who died 200 years ago this week. She left her readers a treasure trove to devour most ardently, including Mansfield Park, arguably her most difficult novel. Read this essay to discover the dark side of the grand estates and courtly balls.