Spring 2018

The American Scholar

Venerable but Lively.

The American Scholar2 min read
Precedents
ON 9/11, I WORKED FOR an outfit whose leader was, among other things, a historian. The morning after the attacks, dozens of us who were his colleagues gathered to hear him offer words of consolation and hope. His tone was neither angry nor bellicose
The American Scholar6 min read
Letters
In his Winter 2018 cover story (“Here’s the Beef with Chicken from China”), James McWilliams reports on concerns about the safety of chicken imported from China. Here in Europe, there are similar concerns about chicken produced in the United States.
The American Scholar10 min read
Seas of Change
RAJA AMPAT IS A REMOTE Indonesian archipelago of more than 600 islands scattered over an area roughly the size of Switzerland. Most of its islands are a steamy wilderness of rainforests and worn limestone peaks, but some are dry, flat, and ringed wit
The American Scholar2 min read
Where the Livin’ Is Easy
SUSAN ROSENBERG JONES photographs the residents of her high-rise complex in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan, most often inside their apartments. Her subjects include a diverse mix of teachers, social workers, nurses, and writers, among other mi
The American Scholar3 min read
Rivers Run Through Us
1. America’s critical infrastructure—TVA dams, Bureau of Reclamation canals, Corps of Engineers levees—was built in an era of active federal agencies with robust budgets. We’re now moving in the opposite fiscal and ideological direction, when budgets
The American Scholar2 min read
Educating Lillian
I grew up in the valley of that mountain, just poor enough that I could imagine a way out. I lived with my mom and a rotating cast of her boyfriends, my father either dead or just checked out. My mother was so vague about him, not a single picture. I
The American Scholar1 min read
Ships of Pearl
Although the chambered nautilus has been around for hundreds of millions of years, it does not readily disclose its secrets. This cephalopod, with its tentacle-like cirrus and lustrous shell, is a deep-sea scavenger: odd and obscure, challenging to o
The American Scholar2 min read
The Color of Faith
In the village of Aradas, on the north-central coast of Portugal, a 400-year-old church houses statues dating to the 17th century. The figures look almost lifelike, so uncannily realistic is the depiction of skin tones: you can see rosy cheeks and li
The American Scholar1 min readEnvironmental Science
Enviably Green
Situated at sea level, with the waves of the North Atlantic crashing against its waterfront, Boston is the world’s eighth-most-vulnerable city to flooding, so it’s no surprise that Mayor Martin Walsh and various organizations are determined to make B
The American Scholar3 min read
Haste Makes Waste
Haste makes waste, handle with care, and a stitch in time saves nine were core adages back when people knew, for instance, the difference between a sparrow hawk and a pigeon hawk, a chicken hawk and a duck hawk. Arcane stuff, huh? And remember penny-
The American Scholar18 min read
A Vacuum At the Center
THE POLITICIAN STANDS before a roaring crowd, or dominates a TV debate, or fires up his already ardent followers with storms of tweets. Is he a populist or a demagogue? The terms are often treated as interchangeable, although populist has today becom
The American Scholar19 min readEnvironmental Science
Courage Before The Thaw
I ARRIVED IN HOMER, Alaska, just after the trees died. It was 1999. A string of warm summers had emboldened a tiny beetle that drilled into local spruce trees and killed them. The spruce bark beetle, which can pirouette on the point of a pin, leveled
The American Scholar20 min readEthnic Studies
The Privilege Predicament
IN MY FRESHMAN YEAR at Queens College, I had a strange awakening—strange in that the attendant, overmastering emotion was a combination of humiliation and pleasure. My English professor had called me to his desk and handed me the A+ paper I had writt
The American Scholar4 min read
Radiation Days
Belly down on the hot seat, I can feel the liquid StyrofoamShape itself around me as both armor and target.What I can’t feel is the bull’s-eye BB delicately placedDead center on the wrinkled sphincter, as the tattooistInks five blue beads around my p
The American Scholar2 min read
A Blessing And A Curse
IT USED TO BE THAT no one talked about cancer. These days we talk about it a lot, and our metaphors are military. The disease is something we battle or fight. Those verbs ennoble and empower us. They disguise the helplessness cancer imposes and the f
The American Scholar21 min read
Of a Fire on The Marsh
IN ALL MY LIFE, it might be the thing I’ve looked for hardest, apart from unrelenting love. A bird: not big or bright, no bird of paradise, no pheasant of Tibet. Instead, a sparrow, a meager lump not quite come into focus in a misty lens. I saw it on
The American Scholar20 min read
When Death Came to Golden
IN JUNE 1977, FOLLOWING MY FIRST YEAR OF COLLEGE, I took a job driving a roach coach, an old converted pickup truck that brought food to workers at construction sites near my neighborhood just outside Denver. The truck was white with diamond-patterne
The American Scholar17 min read
What Is a Dog?
I’M LYING ON THE FLOOR of our kitchen, resting my head on Booker’s huge, hairy chest. It’s late. The house is quiet. He smells like cinnamon rolls baking in a barn. I smell like dog. I come to visit here often now, at the side of Booker’s bed, becaus
The American Scholar18 min read
Live-Hang
The only thing Dave liked about working at the chicken processing plant—years ago now—was the company of his buddy Miguel. They used to argue over what kind of shit smelled worst, and Miguel insisted it wasn’t chicken shit. “You get used to chicken
The American Scholar7 min read
Galleries Of The World
LAST SUMMER, DANIEL H. WEISS was named president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the largest art museum in the United States. In addition to its iconic building on Fifth Avenue, the Met now includes the Cloisters, which is loca
The American Scholar3 min read
Going Dutch
I WAS STANDING IN A ROOM at the National Gallery of Art last October, puzzling at three Dutch paintings of women with parrots: Gerrit Dou’s Woman With a Parrot (1660), Frans van Mieris’s Woman Feeding a Parrot (1663), and Caspar Netscher’s Woman Feed
The American Scholar4 min read
Shadow Warriors
DIRECTORATE S: The CIA and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001–2016 BY STEVE COLL Penguin Press, 784 pp., $35 LOOKING BACK ON the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA’s then–“war commander” Hank Crumpton remembers havin
The American Scholar4 min read
Where the Sun Never Set
VICTORIOUS CENTURY: The United Kingdom, 1800–1906 BY DAVID CANNADINE Viking, 624 pp., $40 IN THE VERY PLAY on words that is the title of this huge new book by the prolific Princeton historian David Cannadine, there is captured much of what is withi
The American Scholar4 min read
Literary Life On The Rocks
THE RECOVERING: Intoxication and Its Aftermath BY LESLIE JAMISON Little, Brown, 544 pp., $30 THE ARCHETYPE OF THE ADDICT looms large in the American mythos, constellated by paradoxical tales of genius and madness, tragedy and lechery. Who among us
The American Scholar5 min read
A Planet in Peril
THE WIZARD AND THE PROPHET: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World BY CHARLES C. MANN Knopf, 640 pp., $28.95 ONE OF THE PLEASURES of reading Charles C. Mann’s new book, The Wizard and the Prophet, is the simpl
The American Scholar5 min readWorld
A Window On Europe
ST. PETERSBURG: Madness, Murder, and Art on the Banks of the Neva BY JONATHAN MILES Pegasus, 560 pp., $29.95 WHEN RASKOLNIKOV, the antihero of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, meditates on the brutal murders he has committed, he wonders whether t
The American Scholar4 min read
A Fallen Angel of Mercy
IN FULL FLIGHT: A Story of Africa and Atonement BY JOHN HEMINWAY Knopf, 336 pp., $27.95 FOLLOW ANY CONTEMPORARY television drama long enough, and you’ll notice the plot twist. Frustrated and heartbroken by a series of mishaps, a character quits the
The American Scholar4 min read
Commonplace Book
Try to understand me: I love you while paying attention to external things. At Toulouse I simply loved you. Tonight I love you on a spring evening, I love you with the window open. —Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone Jollivet, 1926 Inequality is as dear to

The American Scholar

More Issues From The American Scholar