Harper's Magazine [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION] [PRINT]

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Amazon.com Review
Literary, brainy, and left-leaning, Harper's Magazine is an American institution (the first issue was dated June 1850). Its clean, type-heavy design shouts "serious readers only": many pages are two columns of text, period, and the illustrations are mostly art (often photographic) and artistic adornments. The reading, though, is what matters. It's substantive and often sublime. Along with lengthy, thoughtful, frequently controversial articles on politics and culture, you'll find essays, short fiction, in-depth reporting, and a few book reviews. Bylines routinely represent leading writers and thinkers of the day. Standing features include the much-copied but rarely equaled "Harper's Index," in which statistics tell stories; "Readings," a section of excerpts ranging in length from a few lines to thousands of words; and "Annotation," in which a real-life document is reproduced and "explained," usually to devastating political or cultural effect. Each issue is a full meal for the mind. --Nicholas H. Allison

Product Description
This magazine is edited to cover current social, political, cultural, scientific and economic issues. It also includes reporting, essays, fiction and memoirs by distinguished writers and promising new voices. It regularly features a statistical index, short cuts from various international texts and close analysis of current pieces of media.

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Product Details

• Format: Magazine
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• Publisher: Harper's Magazine
• ASIN: B00005N7QO
• Note: Gift-wrapping is not available for this item.
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #97 in Magazines (See Bestsellers in Magazines)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

160 of 171 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Magazine on the Newsstand, April 12, 2002

By	Matthew Vanhouten (Fort Lee, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

Under the supreme tutelage of Editor Lewis Lapham, Harper's Magazine consistently churns out intense, dramatic, sincere, frightening, uplifting, and challenging commentary. If others in the media censor their opinions in the face of big brother, Harper's makes up for it with brutally honest assessments of culture, politics, and world affairs.

At first look, Harper's seems a leftist publication, but if you read it a little more carefully, it's a lot more Mark Twain than Karl Marx. I'd call it centrist, but even that implies straddling the center between two extremes. Like Twain, Harper's is more of a somewhat irascible, yet always caring voice on the outside, not on one end of the spectrum or another, but rather on a different spectrum altogether.

The attitude is egalitarian, never pompous. The voices are reasonable, if sometimes angry or alarmed. Harper's is definitely not a liberal magazine in the sense of Marxist socialism. Harper's is liberal in the sense of Jeffersonian liberalism. It's opinions seem more focused on improving local cultures and economies and challenging the demagogues and central planners who seek to control the masses, be they Democrat or Republican. Perhaps Harper's is the Jim Jeffords of the magazine world.

Harper's is an eloquent and impassioned magazine that delivers carefully constructed and inventive views of the world each month. There is an overriding sense of seriousness and genuine compassion found in every issue. In a world where so many media sources are merely parrots for a larger corporate or political agendas, Harper's stands out as an autonomous voice of indignant opposition to censorship and blind nationalism. If you care about the world we all inhabit and genuinely want to discover how we might all get to a better place, give Harper's a read. It may not provide the answers, but it certainly raises all the right questions.

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars what's not to like?!?, November 20, 2001

By	Benjamin K. Potter "loyal reader/writer" (Memphis, TN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Here's a quick breakdown:

1. Harpers will feed your need for the trivial. The Index is a fascinating collection of facts and figures, and the front-of-book section is probably one of the most quirky, laugh-out-loud funny and stimulating in the business.

2. Great fiction. Some up-and-comers submit, along with some old pros (a recent story by Joyce Carol Oates was outstanding)

3. Great features. Some great topics, albeit a lot of environmental stuff, it's still well-rounded and well-informed. Great ones I've read recently include a look at maids, SUVs, education reform and more.

I can see why people might not like this magazine because it appears to be "uppity." In fact, the only thing that annoys me about this magazine is the letters to the editor, where all of the Ivy-league intellectuals write in and try to prove how smart they are. But I think the appeal is more widespread than that. And you'll be paying less than a dollar an issue -- you'll definitely get your money's worth.

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Superb, Thoughtful Monthly Magazine!, August 7, 2004

By	Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In the several years since my retirement, I have come to wait by my trusty old rusted metal mailbox around the third or fourth of every month, waiting for my monthly issue of two magazines, the Atlantic Monthly and Harpers. Each in iuts own way is likely the best amalgams of intellectual articles on a variety of subjects one can find in contemporary America, and each features a stable of highly regarded writers and authors. For good reason; from subjects as arcane as the supposed imminent fall of the Soviet union based on demographic and economic analysis in the mid-1980s to the recent synopsis of former spy Robert Baer regarding the evils of dealing with the highly corrupted Saudi regime, the magazine consistently offers an erudite, informative, and provocative look at aspects of contemporary reality one cannot find elsewhere.

Needless to say, I really enjoy reading Harpers, especially under the guidance of editor Lewis lapham, and its articles often lead me on Amazon searches for tomes by the talented authors, which in the case of said author Robert Baer, or perpetually sagacious satirist P.J. O'Rourke, or a whole raft of noteable others. All of them lead to some worthwhile reading experiences indeed. It avoids the trendy, so we are spared the suffering through the latest and greatest mass experiences in favor of intellectual roads less traveled, being grassy and rather wont of wear, makes for better and more satisfying traveling, whether trudging through the snow with my Wintertime Dunham Tyroleans or padding down grassy fields in my summertime Birkenstocks. Just keep on trucking! Enjoy!