The American Scholar

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous speech, The American Scholar is the quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932.

Autonomies

The American Scholar

LETTERS

Thank you, friends! • THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR thanks the following people for their financial support in 2019.

Land of Perpetual Night

A Beautiful Vision

Our Heads in the Cloud

We’ve Got a Fight on Our Hands

PROGRESS REPORT

Trade Winds • I thought tenure meant I could retire with the team that drafted me

No Ghost in the Machine • ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ISN’T AS INTELLIGENT AS YOU THINK

The Uncertainty Principle • IN AN AGE OF PROFOUND DISAGREEMENTS, MATHEMATICS SHOWS US HOW TO PURSUE TRUTH TOGETHER

For Richer, For Poorer • A JEWISH IMMIGRANT MARRIED A GILDED AGE SCION. THEY WORKED TOGETHER FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE UNTIL THEY DIDN’T

Living in the Song

FIVE POEMS

Negative Space

Peggy’s War • A PIONEERING AMERICAN JOURNALIST TRAVELED THE WORLD WHILE FIGHTING HER OWN BATTLES AT HOME

Why the Egg Matters • A MEDITATION ON REMEMBRANCE, FAMILY, AND TIME

My Hairy Past • SHOULDER LENGTH OR LONGER, MY MANE WAS ABOUT MY LOOKS, YES, BUT ALSO ABOUT THE NEED FOR JUSTICE

Solstice

If You Frame It Like That • So much depends on the way a work is formatted

Hunger

Searching for Amos Oz in Jerusalem • The acclaimed novelist, who died in 2018, translated Israeli reality

War by Other Means • Subverting governments with lies is nothing new

Image Was Everything • A new biography of the seminal pop artist of the 20th century

Not Quite Forgotten • The unheralded success of a fine American novelist

Making Their Voices Heard • The story behind passage of the 19th Amendment

Poet of the Newsroom • A journalist with the unteachable gift of making you read on

Heaven and the Heretic • A brilliant scientist whose life is a cautionary tale

Glamour and Violence • A group portrait of the brutal Belle Époque

Commonplace Book

AMERICAN PLACES