Articles
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers
by William Deresiewicz
The End of the Black American Narrative
A new century calls for new stories grounded in the present, leaving behind the painful history of slavery and its consequences
by Charles Johnson
Intimacy
Revisiting the gritty Roman neighborhood of his youth, a writer discovers a world of his own invention
by André Aciman
Her Own Society
When Emily Dickinson and her radical friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson met for the first time
by Brenda Wineapple
The Bout
When George Plimpton, the boyish editor of The Paris Review, went three rounds with the light-heavyweight champion of the world
by Blair Fuller
Departments
Editor's Note
Letter From …
Tuning Up
Poetry
Confluences of Sound and Sense
Langdon Hammer
Six Poems
Kay Ryan
After Callimachus
John Talbot
Point of Departure
Commonplace Book
Book Essay
The Grasshopper and His Space Odyssey
A scientist remembers the celebrated science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke
Jeremy Bernstein
Book Reviews
Democracy in Three Dimensions?
How the nation’s capital rose from a fetid forest on the backs of slaves
Heather Ewing
Repatriating Art
A museum director examines the controversy over whether nations own their cultural artifacts