The American Scholar

“What the history of a gesture can tell us about Black creative power.”

“If you’re a character in a current police procedural or prime-time thriller, there are few more frightening, heart-stopping words than when a polite, clean-shaven man asks in a vaguely European accent, ‘Do you like Bach?'”

From toxic shellfish to melting permafrost, Alaska is suffering the effects of climate change so profoundly that no Alaskan remains unaffected, be they scientists or Indigenous subsistence hunters. Here’s how six women are dealing with these changes.

“The violence I have seen has left me feeling hollowed out, unable to gild all the agony with some beautiful meaning.”

An ephemeral birthmark is a rare gift, connecting me to generations spanning the centuries.

Even in a time of shrinking attention spans and incessant Presidential tweets, the Presidential speech still holds great power over Americans and public discourse. Former DOJ speechwriter James Santel analyzes the newly published collection of President Obama’s speeches, We Are the Change We Seek, to study Obama’s legacy, his vision of America, and see what his oratory reveals now that the current President relies on 140 characters and can’t distinguish between a colon and an em dash.

Journalist Shirley Streshinsky recounts how J. Edgar Hoover targeted her husband, photojournalist Ted Streshinsky, in attempts to label him a Soviet spy.

The stories of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler once wrote, “gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse.”

Thoughts, observations, and reflections from the travel journals of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

How instant gratification is “undermining the essential structures of everyday life.”