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

Monday, July 24, 2017

Smarty Pants Podcast

Love Games and First Impressions

How to judge tennis—or a stranger’s face

Stephanie Bastek

Editors’ Picks

The 11 Best Literary Feasts

Our favorite fictional culinary scenes

Our Editors

Works in Progress

Back Bay Aerial View

Urban inspiration in Boston

Joel Babb

Article

Reading Thoreau at 200

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

William Howarth

Commonplace Book

Summer 2017

Beachcombing, with books

Anne Matthews

Portrait of the Artist Mondays

On Mondays, an artist describes a work of art

Raul Gonzalez

Invisible Immigrants

Noelani Kirschner

Tennis, Anyone?

Obsession and regression

Phillip Lopate

Holiday Season

Coming to terms with a month of nothing

Thomas Chatterton Williams

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.