Lewis H. Lapham at work in the offices of Harper’s Magazine. Photograph by Matthew Septimus We at Harper’s Magazine mourn the loss of our editor emeritus, Lewis H. Lapham (1935–2024), who died on July 23 in Rome. A dear friend and colleague for over half a century, Lapham ran the magazine for nearly three decades, serving as editor from 1976 to 1981 and from 1983 to 2006, and regularly contributed columns and essays that were compared to the work of Michel de Montaigne, Mark Twain, and H. L. Mencken. “What so annoys people about the media,” Lapham once wrote, “is not its rudeness or its stup ..read more

After weeks of pressure, the incumbent president, Joe Biden, stepped down as the Democratic nominee and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.12 “Is the platform that Kamala has strong enough to rally people?” asked a Vermont resident.3 “I think she’s fine,” said a voter in Tennessee.4 “I mean, I’m sure everyone would love to have the first female president of the country,” said one Wisconsin resident, “but at the same time … I don’t know.”5 “I didn’t know who she is,” said a Boston resident, “but I want her to win.”6 Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz posted a photo of himself cli ..read more

Former president Donald Trump was injured in what appeared to be a botched assassination attempt during his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania; as shots fired in his direction, Trump clutched his ear in a rictus of pain before diving to the floor, where a Secret Service detail swarmed and dogpiled him, shielding his form until the gunman, atop a nearby roof, was spotted and liquidated.123 Rising from his prone position on the stage, Trump, his right ear bloodied, posed with upraised fist for the benefit of his onlookers, and was soon escorted from the scene where his hit-man manqué, appare ..read more

In June, Rachel Cusk and Ben Lerner joined Harper’s Magazine editor Christopher Carroll for a conversation and Q&A in front of a live audience at the NYU Skirball Center in downtown Manhattan. Listen to Cusk and Lerner read from their recent Harper’s essays and discuss the state of contemporary fiction, Cusk’s use of artists’ biographies in her newest novel Parade, reading in a second language, parenthood, the role of ego in writing, and much more. Subscribe to Harper’s Magazine for only $16.97 per year: harpers.org/save. “The Hofmann Wobble” by Be ..read more

Officials said that Hamas dropped a key demand in ongoing ceasefire talks, that Israel commit up front to definitively ending the war, while Israel introduced a list of new reservations expected to delay negotiations; among Prime Minister Netanyahu’s nonnegotiable demands is that Israel be allowed to keep fighting until it achieves its “war objectives.”123 Israel killed 16 Palestinians in a targeted attack on a U.N.-run school in central Gaza, and the U.N. Human Rights Office warned that Israeli settlers, backed by security forces, are ramping up attacks on herding communities in the South Heb ..read more

Septuagenarian Donald Trump and octogenarian Joe Biden faced off in the first debate of the 2024 presidential election, whose questions the independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. contemporaneously answered in a livestream on X.12 “He’s become like a Palestinian. But they don’t like him, because he’s a very bad Palestinian. He’s a weak one,” said the former president of his opponent.3 “We have a thousand trillionaires in America—I mean, billionaires in America. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they just paid 24 percent or 25 per ..read more

In Muwasi, a rural area north of Rafah, the Israeli military shelled a tent camp designated for refugees, killing 25 and injuring twice as many.1 Israeli officials claimed they could pull off a “blitzkrieg” against Hezbollah, and the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory assessed the use of heavy weapons in Gaza as an “intentional and direct attack on the civilian population,” asserting that Israel had committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, forced starvation, extermination, murder, and inhuman and cruel treatment.2 3 Video ..read more

The Israeli military announced there would be a daily pause in the fighting in Gaza to deliver aid to Gazans, a move that is reportedly “unacceptable” to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was decried as “delusional” by the country’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and was described as the work of “a fool” by the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.1 2 3 The Biden Administration imposed sanctions on the Israeli group Tzav 9 for blocking and damaging humanitarian aid trucks headed for Gaza; the group has close ties to Ben-Gvir, who was found to be “in gross violation of the ..read more

A version of this column originally ran in Le Devoir on May 6, 2024. Translated from the French by Elettra Pauletto. In the 1950s, my father worked as a photographer in New York City, where he specialized in stage rehearsals and Broadway personalities in what was then the center of the English theatrical world. Boosted by America’s economically dominant position after World War II, Broadway had surpassed in gross output – and in glamour – London’s West End, which was still damaged by bombings and depleted by the cost of the recent war against Nazi Germany. I was born into this atmosphere ..read more

In central Gaza, Israeli forces killed at least 40 Palestinians at a U.N. school using U.S.-made munitions, and reportedly later hid inside an aid truck and posed as displaced Palestinians to enter the Nuseirat refugee camp, where more than 270 Palestinians were killed in an operation that rescued four Israeli hostages.1 2 3 4 Hundreds of Palestinians were rushed into al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, overwhelming the last major medical facility in central Gaza.5 “It was, as usual, mayhem. But it was compounded mayhem from the last four days: total chaos inside,” a Doctors Without Borders nurse said ..read more