Harper's Magazine

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Harper's
November 2004 issue
Editor	Roger Hodge
Categories	art, culture, literature, politics
Frequency	monthly
Circulation	220,000
First issue	1850
Country	United States
Language	English
Website	www.harpers.org

Harper's Magazine (or simply Harper's) is a monthly general-interest magazine covering literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts from a progressive, left perspective. 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. Its editor is Roger Hodge, who replaced longtime editor Lewis Lapham on March 31, 2006.^[1] Harper's has won numerous National Magazine Awards.^[2]

Contents 1 History 2 Controversies 3 Notable contributors 4 References 5 External links

[edit] History

Harper's was launched as Harper's New Monthly Magazine in June 1850 by the New York City book-publishing firm Harper & Brothers. This company also founded Harper's Bazaar and what became HarperCollins Publishing. The first press run sold out 7,500 copies almost immediately. Circulation was around 50,000 six months later.^[3]

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. On June 17, 1980, the Star Tribune announced that Harper's would cease publication with the August issue. On July 9, however, John R. MacArthur and his father, Roderick, urged the boards of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Atlantic Richfield Company as well as CEO Robert O Anderson to pledge $1.5 million to establish the Harper's Magazine Foundation, which now operates the magazine. ^[4][5]

In 1963 the magazine published a short story by Norman Mailer called "The Witch of Westport". This was then turned into the successful sitcom Bewitched.

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

In 1971, after the departure of controversial editor Willie Morris, 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.^[6]

In April 2006, Harper's began publishing the Washington Babylon blog on its site. Written by Harper's Washington Editor Ken Silverstein, the blog examines corruption in United States politics. In 2007, Harper's added the No Comment blog, written by Scott Horton, which covers legal controversies, Central Asian politics, and German Studies. In 2008, Harper's added the "Sentences" blog, written by contributing editor Wyatt Mason, on the subject of literature and letters. Also, various writers compose the Weekly Review, which collates one-sentence summaries of political, scientific, and bizarre news. Similar in conception to the Index, the Weekly Review's items are often arranged humorously or for ironic effect.

[edit] Controversies

• 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.^{[citation needed]}

• The March 2006 issue contained an article by Celia Farber entitled Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science, which presented Peter Duesberg's theory that HIV does not cause AIDS.^[7][8] The article was criticized by AIDS activists^[9], scientists^[10], the Columbia Journalism Review^[11] and others for inaccuracy and for promoting a scientifically discredited theory.^[12] The Treatment Action Campaign, a South African group campaigning for greater access to HIV treatment, posted a response by eight prominent AIDS researchers documenting over 50 errors in Farber's article.^[13].

• Harper's 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.^[14]

[edit] Notable contributors

Horatio Alger John R Chapin Winston Churchill Stephen A. Douglas Theodore Dreiser Irwin Edman Jonathan Franzen Robert Frost Barbara Garson John Taylor Gatto Horace Greeley

Mark Greif Barbara Grizzuti Harrison Edward Hoagland Richard Hofstadter Winslow Homer William Dean Howells Seymour Hersh Henry James Naomi Klein Jack London Fitz Hugh Ludlow Norman Mailer

Stanley Milgram John Stuart Mill John Muir Thomas Nast Frederic Remington Richard Rodriguez Theodore Roosevelt George Saunders John Steinbeck Henry L. Stimson Susan Straight Booth Tarkington

Hunter S. Thompson Mark Twain John Updike Kurt Vonnegut David Foster Wallace E.B. White Woodrow Wilson

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Harper's website
• Library of Congress collection, searchable text of magazine from 1850–1899 with links to scanned pages.