In the August issue, the critic Ian Penman reviews Beta’s biography, considering how her musical achievements—and her ...

On September 8, 2026, from 6:00 to 7:30 pm, the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board will host a book talk in the Ceremonial Hall of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The event will feature ...

On October 26, 2026, Harper’s Magazine will gather readers, writers, journalists, donors, and friends at The Morgan Library & Museum for the second annual Harper’s Magazine Awards Ceremony. This ...

Remembering Edwin Dobb We at Harper’s Magazine are deeply saddened by the untimely death of our former contributing editor Edwin Dobb. He wrote many essays for the magazine, including “ Pennies from ...

[Easy Chair] The Spirit of the Age This July will be the two-hundred-fiftieth birthday of the Declaration of Independence, but for me, the far more notable occasion is the fiftieth anniversary of the ...

From a New York Times report, published January 14, 2015, on the outcome of the Powerball lottery. The world’s biggest lottery jackpot of $1.5 billion will be a three-way split of $528 million each.

Whereas child bed wetters in sixteenth-century England had been directed for their malady to consume the testicles of a hedgehog or the windpipe of a cock, Enlightenment science, which rejected ...

We will never know how many died during the Butlerian Jihad. Was it millions? Billions? Trillions, perhaps? It was a fantastic rage, a great revolt that spread like wildfire, consuming everything in ...

The moment I lost my fertility I started searching for a baby. At age thirty-one, after almost two decades of chronic pain caused by endometriosis and its little-studied ravages, I had my uterus, my ...

Age of Cage: Four Decades of Hollywood Through One Singular Career, by Keith Phipps. Henry Holt. 288 pages. $27.99. Last fall, hoping to draw weary crowds back to the multiplex, AMC Theatres enlisted ...

Wendy Carlos: A Biography, by Amanda Sewell. Oxford University Press. 264 pages. $34.95. Electronic music existed in the United States before the majority of Americans had access to electricity. The ...

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies, by Paul Fischer. Simon and Schuster. 416 pages. $28.99. On the morning of October 14, 1888, Louis Le Prince set ...