Lewis H. Lapham’s correspondence with Henry Kissinger can be read here. Lewis H. Lapham wanted to be remembered as a literary man and an essayist, and no one should begrudge his… ...

On minor characters and human possibility ...

From Mysticism, which was published last month by New York Review Books. “Mysticism” is the word for what we modern, critical philosophers are meant to distrust in the name of enlightenment. It is all ...

The AARP stands for nothing. In 1999, the group announced that its four-letter initialism, which for more than forty years had denoted the American Association of Retired Persons, would thenceforth ...

From Mourning a Breast, which was published in July by New York Review Books. Translated from the Chinese by Jennifer Feeley. Every fall, my friends and I get together to admire the lanterns of the ...

From a letter sent in August by Rachel Chambliss, the executive director of operations for the Satanic Temple, to members of the Osceola County school board in Florida. Dear members, On behalf of the ...

This month’s Letters section is devoted to remembrances of Lewis H. Lapham (1935–2024), the editor of Harper’s Magazine from 1976 to 1981 and from 1983 to 2006. I first worked for Lewis just out of ...

He took George Washington’s and John Quincy Adams’s anti-imperialist admonitions to heart; he spoke passionately about the ...

Try, start here, try bringing a pot of coffee out into the sun in despite of the hot weather, and sit at your chair and table ready for all possible assimilations. Include with the coffee something ...

In the summer of 2023, California legislators approved a bill banning discrimination on the grounds of caste. Defined in the bill as “an individual’s perceived position in a system of social ...

Does anyone believe in college education anymore? Republicans certainly don’t—a mere 19 percent of them expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education in a Gallup poll ...