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.

Tastes Like … You Know

The American Scholar

In the Endless Arctic Light • A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate

The Wonder of It All • In search of awe

Verde • Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew

Words Matter • An opera can succeed only if libretto and score are in concert

Vital Signs • What happened when my husband became a paramedic

Under a Spell Everlasting • Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from the cataclysm of war

Double Exposure • On our first memories

The Fair Fields • Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil

In the Mushroom • True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business

The Art of Tuning In

Midnight

Easter Island

Analogies and Metaphors

Personals

Strange as the Rules of Grammar II

The Chair

Why California Will Never Be Like Tuscany

Halo

The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend • How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths

The Writer in the Family • The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero

Granaries of Language • Dictionaries are far more than alphabetized collections of words

The Weight of a Stone • Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology

Magic Men

DIVIDED PROVIDENCE • Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War

AGING OUT • Many of us do not go gentle into that good night

IDEOLOGY AS ANATOMY • How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives

ISLAND ROYALTY • A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary

THE CREATOR'S CODE • Are humans alone in their ability to make art?

ALL TALK • Ease of communication will not save us

BARBARITY AT THE BATACLAN • A chilling account of darkness in the City of Light

Commonplace Book

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