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.

Intermezzo or Coda?

The American Scholar

Afloat Between Worlds • What is the meaning of the mystical visions that a sailor experiences at sea?

Thinking in the Margins • What Oliver Sacks jotted down in the books he read

Why Lee Wiley? • The singer you need to hear now

Rhetorical Questions • In Eavan Boland’s Stanford workshop, the poet imparted lessons on suffering, expression, and the importance of a sandwich

Night Shade • After my husband died, why did he continue to haunt my dreams?

Weekend Warriors • How are competitive kids’ sports changing America?

On the Trail of Jeremiah • Robert Redford, the lure of the West, and the art of getting away

The Bottom of the Ninth • In baseball and in life, there is a cost to our pursuit of an error-free existence

‘In the Presence of People No Longer Here’ • Historians in the Ukrainian city of Lviv are documenting the horrors of the past while living in the shadow of war

The Final Word • The death of Gabby Petito and the uncomfortable intimacy of vocal re-creation software

Voyagers • THE SENSATION OF BEING SITUATED ACROSS TIME AND SPACE IN THE VERSE OF JOHN KINSELLA

The Story of Mumbet • Who was the enslaved woman whose burial site at a Berkshires cemetery draws so much reverence and respect?

First Love, Faded Bloom • Rereading Gone with the Wind on a trip through the South

Spreading the Good Word • Wilfrid Sheed’s essays pulsed with the energy of midcentury America

Your Perspective or Mine? • A brief history of subjectivity

Inheritance

THE GUILT OF VICTORY AND THE VIRTUE OF DEFEAT • Wrestling with war and its aftermath

WHO IS THINKING? • The quest to discover the answer to an age-old question

THE GREAT DECIPHERMENT • Decoding the story of a lost civilization

THINK, AGAIN • Reckoning with the elegance of physical laws and the wonders of being alive

FAMILY TREES • Threats to our woods are threats to us all

LEDE-ING LADIES • How female foreign correspondents transformed journalism

CRIMINAL COMPLEXITY • What inherited traits can—and can’t—tell us about violent behavior

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