Harper's Magazine
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An issue of Harper's Magazine from 1905 |
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Another issue, from November 2004 |
Harper's Magazine (or simply
Harper's) is a monthly general-interest
magazine covering literature, politics, culture, and the arts from a
progressive left perspective. It is the second oldest continuously-published monthly magazine (the oldest magazine being
Scientific American) in the
United States, with a current circulation of slightly more than 200,000. Its editor is
Roger Hodge, who replaced longtime editor
Lewis Lapham on March 31, 2006.
was launched in June
1850 by the
New York City book-publishing firm
Harper & Brothers. The initial press run of 7,500 copies sold out immediately, and within six months circulation had reached 50,000.
The earliest issues consisted largely of material that had already been published in England, but the publication soon began to print the work of American artists and writers. It subsequently published commentaries by prominent politicians from both sides of the Atlantic, such as
Winston Churchill and
Woodrow Wilson.
In
1962, Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson, & Company to become Harper & Row (now
HarperCollins). Later, the magazine became a separate corporation and a division of the
Minneapolis Star and Tribune Company. In 1980, when the parent company announced that
Harper's would cease publication,
John R. MacArthur and his father, Roderick, urged the boards of the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the
Atlantic Richfield Company to establish the Harper's Magazine Foundation, which now operates the magazine.
In
1971, Lapham joined the magazine as managing editor, serving as editor from
1976 until
1981; in
1983, he resumed his position, which he held until
March 2006.In
1984, Lapham and MacArthur — now publisher and president of the foundation — redesigned
Harper's and introduced the popular
Harper's Index (a list of statistics chosen and arranged, often for ironic effect), Readings, and the Annotation to complement its fiction, essays, and reporting.
Under the leadership of Lapham and MacArthur, the magazine continues to publish literary fiction by such authors as
John Updike and
George Saunders, and has emerged as a particularly vocal critic of America's domestic and foreign policies. Lapham's monthly
Notebook columns have lambasted
Bill Clinton's administration as well as the administration of
George W. Bush, and since
2003, the magazine has paid special attention to the war in
Iraq, with long articles on
Fallujah and the post-war reconstruction of Iraq. Other feature stories have covered the debate over abortion, cloning, and global warming.
[An American Album: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Harper's Magazine, a 712-page illustrated anthology with an introduction by Lewis H. Lapham and a foreword by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.]Harper's began publishing the
Harper's Magazine Blog on its
site in April 2006. Also called
Washington Babylon and written by Harper's Washington Editor Ken Silverstein, the blog examines corruption in United States politics.
*In 1950, a preview feature by
Eric Larrabee in
Harper's on
Immanuel Velikovsky's soon-to-be bestseller
Worlds in Collision marked the beginning of a controversy over the latter's theories which continues to this day.
*In an essay that appeared in the September 2004 issue of
Harper's, Lewis Lapham fictionalized an account of the
2004 Republican National Convention, which had not yet taken place. Lapham subsequently apologized in a note to readers.
*The March 2006 issue contained a 15-page article by
Celia Farber titled "Out of Control: AIDS and the corruption of medical science" that critically examined the ethics and industry of
antiretroviral drugs.
Farber's favorable presentation of virologist
Peter Duesberg's argument that there is no direct link between
HIV and
AIDS garnered mostly criticism among AIDS activists
and others
. As a result, the Treatment Action Campaign Web site, a South African group campaigning for greater access to HIV treatment, posted a 37-page reply written by eight prominent AIDS researchers documenting over 50 errors in Farber's article, claiming it contains misleading implications, false statements, and implications without evidence of sinister motives.
. A response to rebut Gallo's response can be found
here.
*
Horatio Alger*
Winston Churchill *
Stephen A. Douglas*
Theodore Dreiser *
Irwin Edman*
Jonathan Franzen*
Robert Frost*
Horace Greeley*
Mark Greif*
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison*
Edward Hoagland*
Winslow Homer *
William Dean Howells*
Seymour Hersh*
Henry James *
Jack London*
Fitz Hugh Ludlow*
Stanley Milgram*
John Muir*
Thomas Nast*
Frederic Remington*
Theodore Roosevelt *
George Saunders *
Henry L. Stimson*
Susan Straight*
Booth Tarkington*
Hunter S. Thompson*
Mark Twain*
John Updike*
David Foster Wallace*
Woodrow Wilson*
Harper's website
