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

LETTERS

EASY CHAIR • Disenchantment

WE ATE THEM • By David Treuer, from The Savage Mind: An American Legacy, which will be published this month by Little, Brown. Treuer directly addresses his children throughout the book.

HEAVY META

BLINK TWICE IF YOU’RE REAL • From public-service announcements issued in 2025 and 2026 by U.S. state and federal agencies alerting the public to signs of scams involving artificial intelligence.

THE ORIGINAL BITCH • From Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women, by Eleanor Johnson, which will be published this month by Princeton University Press.

INT’L SETTLERS ANTHEM • From lyrics of songs on the 2025 album Guardians of the Threshold, a collaboration by the Israeli rappers the Shadow and Subliminal. The Israeli national-security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, attended the rappers’ joint birthday party in December.

SCAT SCAN

THE WASHING MACHINE • By Elvira Navarro, from Blood Is Dripping onto the Courtyard, which was published last month by Two Lines Press. Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM • From My Family Album, by Frans de Waal, which will be published this month by W. W. Norton.

AGAINST A COMING COLDER SEASON • By Lindsay Turner, from Middle Slope, which will be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

BARN BURNERS • Can the Democrats harness the new prairie populism?

A CRAZY POLITY

Good old-fashioned intelligence.

STARGAZING • Art and censorship after 9/11

AT THE EDGE OF EMPIRE • The rise and fall of immigration boomtowns

THEN THEY CAME FOR THE OSTRICHES • Poultry and paranoia in the Great White North

THE GUN

NEW BOOKS

MISSING IN ACTION • The myth of Cesare Pavese

PUZZLE • FOURSOMES

FINDINGS