An issue of Harper's from 1905
(also
Harper's) is a monthly, general-interest
magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. It is the second-oldest, continuously-published monthly magazine (
Scientific American is the oldest) in the U.S.; current circulation is more than 220,000 issues. The current editor is
Roger Hodge, who replaced
Lewis Lapham on March 31, 2006.
Harper's Magazine has won many
National Magazine Awards.
History
Harper's Magazine was launched as
Harper's New Monthly Magazine in June 1850, by the New York City publisher
Harper & Brothers; who also founded
Harper's Bazaar magazine, later growing to become
HarperCollins Publishing. The first press run, of 7,500 copies, sold out almost immediately; circulation was some 50,000 issues six months later.
The early issues reprinted material already published in England, but the magazine soon was publishing the work of American artists and writers, and in time commentary by the likes of
Winston Churchill and
Woodrow Wilson.
In 1962, Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson & Company, becoming Harper & Row (now
HarperCollins). In 1965, the magazine was separately incorporated, and became a division of the
Minneapolis Star and Tribune Company. On June 17, 1980, the Star Tribune announced it would cease publishing
Harper's Magazine after the August 1980 issue; however, on July 9, 1980,
John R. MacArthur and his father, Roderick, obtained pledges from the directorial boards of the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the
Atlantic Richfield Company, and CEO
Robert Orville Anderson to amass the one-and-a-half million dollars needed to establish the Harper's Magazine Foundation that currently publishes the magazine.
In the 1970s, the magazine published
Seymour Hersh's reporting of the
My Lai massacre. In 1971, after the controversial editor
Willie Morris left, Lewis H. Lapham became the managing editor, once from 1976 until 1981; and again, from 1983 until 2006.
In 1984, Lapham and MacArthur — now publisher and president of the foundation — along with new executive editor Michael Pollan, redesigned
Harper's and introduced the "Harper's Index" (ironic statistics arranged for thoughtful effect), "Readings", and the "Annotation" departments to complement its fiction, essays, and reportage.
Under the Lapham-MacArthur leadership,
Harper's magazine continued publishing literary fiction by the likes of
John Updike,
George Saunders, and others. Politically,
Harper's was an especially vocal critic of U.S. domestic and foreign policies. Editor Lapham's monthly "Notebook" columns have lambasted the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations, and, since 2003, the magazine has concentrated on reportage about U.S. war against Iraq, with long articles about the battle for Fallujah, and the cronyism of the American "reconstruction" of Iraq. Moreover, other stories have covered abortion, cloning, and global warming.
In April 2006,
Harper's began publishing the
Washington Babylon blog in its , wherein Washington Editor
Ken Silverstein writes about corrupt American politics. In 2007,
Harper's added the
No Comment blog, by
Scott Horton, about legal controversies, Central Asian politics, and German studies. In 2008,
Harper's added the blog, by contributing editor
Wyatt Mason, about literature and
belle lettres. Also, writers compose the
Weekly Review, single-sentence summaries of political, scientific, and bizarre news; like the
Harper's Index, the
Weekly Review items are humorously and ironically arranged.
Controversies
In his essay "Tentacles of rage: The Republican propaganda mill, a brief history," published in the September 2004 issue,
Lewis H. Lapham fictionalized his reportage of the
2004 Republican National Convention, which had yet to occur. He apologized in a note.
The March 2006 issue contained the
Celia Farber reportage,
Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science, presenting
Peter Duesberg's
theory that HIV does not cause AIDS. It was strongly criticized by AIDS activists, scientists, the
Columbia Journalism Review, and others, as inaccurate and for promoting a scientifically-discredited theory. The
Treatment Action Campaign, a South African organization working for greater popular access to HIV treatments, posted a response by eight researchers documenting more than fifty errors in the article.
In summer of 2006,
Harper's serially published
John Robert Lennon's novel
Happyland when its original publisher,
W. W. Norton, decided not to publish it, fearing a libel lawsuit. The protagonist is doll magnate Happy Masters, whose story parallels the life of
Pleasant Rowland, the creator of the
American Girl doll business.
Notable contributors
