Harper's Magazine

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An issue of Harper's Magazine from 1905

Another issue, from November 2004

Harper's Magazine (or simply Harper's) is a monthly general-interest magazine covering literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts from a progressive, moderate left perspective in a fashion often not found in the ordinary news-media. 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 220,000.^[1] Its editor is Roger Hodge, who replaced longtime editor Lewis Lapham on March 31, 2006.^[2] Harper's has won numerous National Magazine and other awards.^[3]

1 History
2 Controversies
3 Notable contributors
4 References
5 External link

[edit] History

Harper's was launched in June 1850 by the New York City book-publishing firm Harper & Brothers. The first press run sold out 7,500 copies almost immediately. Circulation was around 50,000 six months later.^[4]

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.

The 1970s brought events such as Seymour Hersh's reporting of the My Lai massacre.

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.^[5]

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.

[edit] Controversies

The Perils of Obedience, a 1974 article written by Stanley Milgram that was abridged from his book Obedience to Authority, first appeared in Harper's. The article contained results from an experiment that showed adults being willing to subject another person to painful electric shocks for the purpose of learning when under direct orders from a figure of authority. While the person receiving shocks was only an actor, the subjects would continuously increase the voltage of the shock to the point of excruciating pain under orders from the experimenter, despite moral hesitation. The study concluded with Milgram stating that perhaps certain cases, such as the Nazi war crimes, were performed under such authority because of a transfer of responsibility to the superior commander. The idea that such actions should not immediately be attributed to the offender, as well as the idea that man could be so brutal under such conditions sparked great controversy.

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.^[6]

The March 2006 issue contained an article by the AIDS dissident Celia Farber, entitled Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science, which presented an argument that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.^[7] Farber's favorable presentation of the argument that there is no direct link between HIV and AIDS garnered mostly criticism from AIDS activists,^[8] the scientific community,^[9] and others.^[10]. As a result, the Treatment Action Campaign, a South African group campaigning for greater access to HIV treatment, posted a reply written by eight prominent AIDS researchers documenting over 50 errors in Farber's article, claiming it contained misleading statements, factual errors, and unfounded implications of sinister motivation.^[11] ^[12]. A response to rebut Gallo's response can be found here.

Harper's is also in the midst of a publishing controversy. It decided to serialize John Robert Lennon's novel "Happyland" after the original publisher, W. W. Norton, decided not to publish the novel. The content of the book and its protagonist, doll magnate Happy Masters, strongly parallels the real life story of American Girl doll creator Pleasant Rowland. Norton decided not to publish due to concerns about libel; Harper's began serialization of the story in the summer of 2006.^[13]