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 • Geopolitical Narcissism

TRUTH DECAY • By Thomas S. Mullaney, from How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information, which will be published this month by W. W. Norton.

MATÉRIEL WORLD

GETTING SHILLED • By Tony Price, from “You Don’t Actually Like the Band Geese,” which was published in April on Maximum Exposure Inc., Price’s Substack newsletter.

HANGMEN ALSO DIE

PIVOTAL MOMENTS • From obituary headlines that have appeared in the New York Times since 2020.

GRATUITOUS ACTS OF SELF-DELIGHT • From “The Hormone Pill,” by César Aira, a story in the collection Five, which will be published this month by New Directions.

UFORIA • From eyewitness testimonies sent to the National UFO Reporting Center since 1999.

STEELY DAN POEM (AKA TWISTS)

THE CONSCIENCE OF THE CITY • On the life of the garbageman

CIVIL SERVICE

HARD RAIN • The battle over weather modification

LOVE LANGUAGE • The undying dream of Esperanto

Good old-fashioned intelligence.

THE DATA-CENTER DIVIDE • Why politicians are squandering the anti-AI backlash

WHY

SOLUTION TO THE MAY PUZZLE • NOTES FOR “WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!”

NEW BOOKS

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN • The city that Bernie Goetz made

DEFT-NITIONS

FINDINGS