One night in early 1941, when Harry Crews was five years old, his father nearly killed his mother with a twelve-gauge shotgun. Looking back almost four decades later, Crews didn’t find that fact ...

A person once said to me, “You’re a writer. You must have a lot to say.” He was making an assumption. I’ve thought about his assumption many times. Is it that simple? Do I write because I have a lot ...

I went to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005 because I’d won a writing prize, and with that prize came an invitation to a luncheon and awards ceremony. Each honoree was allowed to bring ...

In the fall of 2014, I attended a public dialogue on “Revolution and Religion” between Bob Avakian, chairman and cofounder of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and Cornel West, professor of ...

How a band of island nations became Israel’s staunchest defenders ...

From a court memo filed by attorneys for Samuel Mullet Sr., an Amish bishop from Bergholz, Ohio. Mullet was sentenced in February to fifteen years in prison for having coordinated… ...

From the Forum “Undoing Bush” It has always been the case that failed wars damage armies and sometimes break them. So it is with Iraq, unless remedies intervene soon enough.… ...

As a small child, I would sometimes sit with my parents in our suburban London living room and watch the six o’clock news on the BBC. One evening, I saw… ...

From “An Army of One’s Own,” which appeared in the February 1997 issue of Harper’s Magazine. The complete article—along with the magazine’s entire 174 ...

“If you love a place,” a retired ranger who worked at the Grand Canyon once told me, “don’t make it a national park.” On a typical visit to Grand Canyon National Park during the summer, you will first ...

My wife, Heidi, and I put up a string of Christmas lights early in the pandemic. They were LEDs that slowly flashed different colors, hung along a copper wire that stretched above our windows. As 2020 ...

The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, by Jon Meacham. Random House. 416 pages. $20. The Soul of America, directed by KD Davison. HBO, 2020. 77 minutes. It’s the beginning of the new ...