An American Album: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Harper's Magazine

by Lewis H. Lapham (Editor)

The American experience is explored through this collection of the magazine's best reports, poetry, fiction, commentary, speeches and humorous writings--from authors ranging from Mark Twain to Annie Dillard. 200+ illustrations.

Genres: Nonfiction

712 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

Lewis Henry Lapham was the editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and again from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder and current editor of Lapham's Quarterly, featuring a wide range of famous authors devoted to a single topic in each issue. Lapham has also written numerous books on politics and current affairs.

Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some gems here. Would make a good coffee table book... also several essays might be good as auxillary history class readings. Too bad the book is the size of a telephone directory! I saw a copy at B$N in Ft. Worth for $5 but knew that I couldn't fit it in my luggage.

[Penner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Massive but rewarding tome. Contains several famous pieces that were first published in Harper's, including Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter," John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Great Wall Street Crash," Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," and Seymour Hersh's reporting on the My Lai massacre. Beyond that, since the first piece was published in 1851, it provides a history of the last 150 years in America through the voices of those who were there -- thinking, talking, and writing about what it meant to them at the time, rather than through the lens of history.

[Manel]

Amazing articles from their magazine starting from the late 1800's. Mark Twain's Adam's Diary and Eve's Diary is poignant and hilarious. There are articles by such diverse authors as FDR, Sylvia Plath, James Joyce and Pico Iyer.

[Jodeen Olguin-Tayler]

I'm addicted to the Harpers Index (a monthly report interestingly related statistics) as well as the comics and short fiction that are also monthly features.

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto]

Received 30 November 2007.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harper's — the very best.