Harper's Magazine

HARPER’S MAGAZINE, the oldest general interest monthly in America, explores the issues that drive our national conversation through such celebrated features as Readings, Annotation, and Findings, as well as the iconic Harper’s Index.

Harper’s Magazine US

LETTERS

EASY CHAIR • Sample Truths

[Essay] SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL • By Adolph Reed Jr., from The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives, which will be published this month by Verso.

CUTTING LINES • From the lyrics of a song sung in Polish by a plush dancing cactus. The toy is marketed as an educational tool for children and was sold on Walmart.com until it was withdrawn in November.

CAMPAIGN FOWL • From an interview with Jim Puckett, the mayor of Fitzgerald, Georgia, that was conducted in November by the CBC Radio correspondent Carol Off. Puckett lost his 2021 bid for reelection after spending almost $300,000 to build a sixty-four-foot-tall topiary chicken.

YACHT TO KNOW BETTER • From “Why yachting families make great climate caretakers,” which was published in November on the website Superyacht Life. The average super yacht is estimated to produce 7,020 tons of carbon dioxide each year.

UNCOOL WHIP • From complaints submitted to the City of Reno, Nevada, last year.

BOND MARKET • From “License to Dine: 007 and the Real Exchange Rate,” a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Lee A. Craig, Julianne Treme, and Thomas J. Weiss, which compares the evolution of James Bond’s salary with that of French and British restaurant prices.

BLAST RITES

WILDLIFE FUND • By Ingrid Burrington, from “Animal, Vegetable, Capital,” an essay that appeared in Issue 3 of Lux Magazine.

EVERYONE’S A CRITIC • From a list of accidental damage done to works of art since 2000, collected in Artifacts, which will be published next month by Phaidon.

THE BATHERS • By María Gainza, from Portrait of an Unknown Lady, a novel, which will be published next month by Catapult. Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead.

FEAST OF THE FIRST MORNING OF THE FIRST DAY • By Hoa Nguyen, from A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure, a poetry collection, which was published in April 2021 by Wave Books.

ARTLESS RESPONSE • From letters exchanged in 1982 between the Whitney Museum of American Art and an author and critic referred to here as E.R. Harper’s Magazine obtained the letters in November.

FREE COUNTRY • Permitless carry and the new gun-rights extremism

THE GOOD CITIZEN

ANOTHER GREEN WORLD • Can the planet’s ecosystems be replicated?

THE GREAT WALL OF STEEL • Xi Jinping remakes Chinese nationalism

TWO POEMS

America’s MOST “ INTERESTING MAGAZINE ˮ* HARPERS

LATE AT NIGHT

NEW BOOKS

NATIONAL TREASURE • The ecstatic cult of Nicolas Cage

EVERY CHILD AN EMPEROR • On Maria Montessori

OLD FRIENDS

FINDINGS