Summer 2021

The American Scholar

Venerable but Lively.

The American Scholar1 min read
The American Scholar
ROBERT WILSON Editor SUDIP BOSE Managing Editor BRUCE FALCONER Senior Editor STEPHANIE BASTEK Associate Editor JAYNE ROSS Assistant Editor DAVID HERBICK Design Director SANDRA COSTICH Editor-at-Large LANGDON HAMMER Poetry Editor SALLY
The American Scholar2 min readMedical
Interlude
given the plunging vaccination rates and the determination in places like northwest Florida to act as if the virus does not exist. And even if we do reach a level of vaccination that justifies our eagerness to return to normal life, we should I THINK
The American Scholar4 min readPolitics
Letters
I must take exception to a statement in Shakhar Rahav’s “The China Model” (Spring 2021), which asserts that “Xi’s rise augured the rise of populist, authoritarian leaders in many countries.” The examples that follow include “Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil,
The American Scholar1 min read
Making a Living Making a Life
Daniel Rose A real estate developer and philanthropist presents a masterful debut collection of exceptionally cogent and timely speeches and essays. “Ever the stylist, his succinct, well-cadenced prose shows an engaged mind, sharply tuned wit, and c
The American Scholar9 min readMedical
Living in Limbo
AT THE END OF DECEMBER 2020, a tremendous storm surge hit the seafront of Naples. Waves of more than 30 feet, pushed by a wind that roared at nearly 55 miles an hour, slammed into the central coast of the Bay of Naples with a fearsome energy, driving
The American Scholar2 min read
Finding Our Inner Child
Photographer Maranie Staab has spent the past several years covering social justice and human rights issues, most recently capturing the protests for racial justice in Syracuse, Rochester, Portland (Oregon), and her native Pittsburgh. Another project
The American Scholar3 min readFashion
Fashion Forward
Aditi Mayer is a sustainable-fashion blogger, photojournalist, labor-rights activist, and speaker. Next year, as a National Geographic Storytelling Fellow, she will report on the social and environmental effects of India’s fashion supply chain. We as
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Life In Black And White
Emily Bernard, a SCHOLAR contributing editor, is an essayist and the author of three books, most recently Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, and editor of two others. Her essays have been reprinted in T
The American Scholar4 min read
X
LATELY I HAVE READ ABOUT Latinx, a noun, a term that is supposed to name people like me without naming people like me. I saw it in The New York Times.At some universities, there are academic departments devoted to Latinx studies. I am old enough to b
The American Scholar15 min readMedical
Rewilding Our Minds
ALMOST EXACTLY A YEAR AFTER England locked down for the first time, as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, I was walking down a wild and overgrown abandoned canal with my young family, looking for frogspawn and other signs of spring. I was 10 days overd
The American Scholar19 min readMedical
Of Plagues and Prejudice
PANDEMICS MAKE US THINK about the plagues of the past. As we live through the time of Covid-19, we seek lessons from other moments when microorganisms caused widespread death and devastation. In the 19th century, cholera put great cities into states
The American Scholar21 min readAmerican Government
The Power of Restraint
1 Late last year, the first announcements of 20th-anniversary commemorations of the 9/11 attacks started trickling across the Google transom. ABC, the BBC, and HBO announced the production of significant documentaries. The Tunnel to Towers Foundation
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Poetry
At the Met you enter not with a bleeding but an open heart, a heart proudly exposed like those of ancient saints seriously displaying theirs so beautifully on the outside of their blue and red garments, garments of bright colors trimmed with yellow g
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Washing Feet in Dolpo
I HAD A SORROW I COULD NOT SHAKE. It tailed me, waited for me around corners and whispered from the shadows. Sometimes it seemed to jump into my path. Because of it, I resolved to go for a walk. A long one. Although hardly young, I elected to go to t
The American Scholar14 min read
Orange You Glad
LATE ONE WINTER AFTERNOON several years ago, three friends and I were running in a recreation area near my home in Asturias, in northern Spain. Though the area is just a 15-minute drive from the heart of the city, it’s more wilderness than park, and
The American Scholar18 min read
Black Turtlenecks, Hoop Earrings
I WOULD NEVER HAVE AGREED with Robert Lowell’s comment about the “tranquillized Fifties.” Maybe that’s because I grew up in New York City, which always seemed to pulse with unruly energy. Or maybe it’s because I went to a special high school—Hunter C
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Those Two
I announce adhesiveness—I say it shall be limitless, unloosen’d; I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for. —Walt Whitman, “So Long!” 1 The truth is, there was no one else around. Months later, not at first, one of them would say that
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Wicked Brew
ALL DAY, OLD MAN MCGINTY had watched the different festivities at the Highland Games: the caber toss and the sheepdog trials and the young girls in their plaid skirts dancing the Highland fling, all vying for blue ribbons and their picture in the loc
The American Scholar10 min read
Raising Mank
I FIRST FELL IN LOVE with director David Fincher after watching Se7en (1995), a film about a fictive serial killer with a menacing softness that lent a poetic flair to the truly monstrous—and that made all of us in the theater sit in the shadow of ma
The American Scholar7 min read
The Inheritance of Nations
NAPOLEON HAD TWO ARMIES: one for conquering nations, the other for gathering their artifacts. At its height, the Grande Armée numbered nearly 700,000—infantry, cavalry, and artillery capable of military dominance across the European continent. On its
The American Scholar10 min read
Remembering Brad
I FIRST MET BRAD WATSON back in 1997, when my wife and I were living in East Dennis, Massachusetts, on the bay side of Cape Cod. Brad was already 40 when his first book, the short-story collection Last Days of the Dog-Men, was published, and the crit
The American Scholar4 min readPolitical Ideologies
E Pluribus Unum?
AMERICAN REPUBLICS: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850 BY ALAN TAYLOR Norton, 554 pp., $35 “BEFORE THE WAR, it was said ‘the United States are,’ ” noted the late novelist and Civil War historian Shelby Foote. “Grammatically, it w
The American Scholar5 min read
From Mojave To The Moon
TEST GODS: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut BY NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE Henry Holt, 333 pp., $29.99 ON ITS SURFACE, Test Gods tells the story of Mark Stucky, the lead test pilot for Virgin Galactic, a space tourism startup in Mojave, C
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Lessons in Abstraction
CLAIRVOYANT OF THE SMALL: The Life of Robert Walser BY SUSAN BERNOFSKY Yale University Press, 392 pp., $35 CLAIRVOYANT OF THE SMALL, Susan Bernofsky’s long-awaited biography of the Swiss modernist writer Robert Walser, is erudite, painstakingly tho
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Deep-Rooted Communities
FINDING THE MOTHER TREE: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest BY SUZANNE SIMARD Knopf, 368 pp., $28.95 I TOOK THE death of the spruce tree outside our kitchen window personally. When we bought the house a decade ago, it was only as tall as our firs
The American Scholar4 min readPhysics
Physics For The Feeble-Minded
Review by Jethro K. Lieberman HELGOLAND: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution BY CARLO ROVELLI (Translated from the Italian by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell) Riverhead, 256 pp., $20 CARLO ROVELLI’S newest book, Helgoland: Making Sense of the Qua
The American Scholar4 min read
Companions Through Time
THE HERO’S WAY: Walking with Garibaldi from Rome to Ravenna BY TIM PARKS Norton, 352 pp., $27.95 IN JULY 1849, the world was watching as the freedom fighter from Montevideo assembled his troops for a tactical retreat. Writing for the New-York Tribu
The American Scholar4 min read
Commonplace Book
The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent? All nature prompts and reproves us. How early in the year it begins to be late! —Henry David Thoreau, Journal, August 18, 1853 I thought of Carthage, Baalbek, Jerusalem, Rome,

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