American Scholar articles

Recent articles from American Scholar

Updike at rest.(Editor's Note)
March 22, 2009... In all the many elegant tributes to John Updike that appeared in the first days and weeks after his death in late January, I missed any mention of the thing that was troubling me most. Soon after he died I had said to a friend, half in jest, that I felt as if a minor god, who kept careful...

Causality and contingency.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2009... John Lukacs's article in your Winter 2009 issue purports to enhance the readers' knowledge of the methodologies of history and science by demonstrating that both rely on subjectivity. The area allowed for subjectivity in science, however, is much more constricted than in history. The key to...

Savage legacy.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2009... John Tirman, citing Richard Slotkin, writes of a "morally cleansing series of 'savage wars' that conveyed upon the pioneers a 'regeneration through violence.'" I fail to see moral cleansing in the triumphalism with which most Americans have viewed the realization of Manifest Destiny. My...

Naming names.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2009... Clay Risen's "Spies Among Us" enlightened yet saddened me, particularly his warning that "as of late 2008, there are approximately a million names in the Terrorist Screening Database." Government-paid employees also developed alleged "security" files on Albert Einstein, Louis Armstrong,...

Literary encounters.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2009... Steven Isenberg's essay in the Winter issue richly evokes his meetings with four august lovers of language. As a broadcaster of many years, during which I interviewed more than 1,600 authors, I was reminded of the joy I had in meeting them and of that curious sense of not ever being quite up...