“Americans may have learned to live with soaring levels of inequality, but we have never really come to love our elites, and earlier this year, our relationship with the ruling class reached a new low.” —Thomas Frank

“He worked neither for pleasure nor because he needed to, but simply because he had to do certain things in a certain amount of time.” From And How Have You Been?, by Maria Judite de Carvalho, from @twolinespress.com.

“For all that it inveighed against materialism, the book became a consumer good, inert and increasingly innocuous, its name adopted by nail polishes, Chelsea boots, and fountain pens.” Dan Piepenbring on Lady C: The Long, Sensational Life of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

“This is pretty close to a universal sentiment among the roughly forty visitors I speak to over the weekend. France is ‘une catastrophe.’ ‘Simply put, our government is run by idiots.’ ‘It’s sad.’ ‘We feel a bit lost.’” —Nat Segnit

“It has been the defining problem of human civilization, what to do with our shit. Timothy Morton writes that Jacques Lacan wrote that. Though Morton doesn’t agree with the human-civilization part, and neither do I.” —Kristin Dombek

“If a contestant walks at any time during the race, he/she will be disqualified, but will remain eligible for the Cutest Diaper Award.” From a selection of rules and regulations for diaper derbies that have been printed by American county fairs. harpers.org/archive/2026...

“We must think about death. Yes, yes, yes. But I am also allowed to just think about death when I am dying, or to drug the thought away even then, or simply to pretend it’s not happening.” From the 2026 edition of NOON. harpers.org/archive/2026...

“Our gerontocracy is not the result of a malevolent plan, exactly. It is, more than anything, an accidental byproduct of the legitimate and understandable desire to survive.” @samuelmoyn.bsky.social on America’s gerontocratic crisis

“The demands of the aging are already becoming emphatic, and their power as a pressure group is recognized in politics.” From the October 1939 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

“I’m asking you: Can you pretend? Can you say, I’m going to do this fairly, I’m going to do this rationally, I’m going to use my mind to do it and not be governed by some other experience?” From the jury-selection proceedings a civil trial involving Elon Musk.

“Waldrop never settles a score or casts aspersions. Rather, he’s after the emery texture of life, what Sinclair Lewis called ‘negation canonized’…” Dan Piepenbring reviews Keith Waldrop’s Light While There Is Light: An American History.

“It is as if paintings of this caliber (like Krauss, I prefer La Tour even to Caravaggio) reach us with the delayed light of a star.” From a letter by Alexander Nemerov.

“For all that it inveighed against materialism, the book became a consumer good, inert and increasingly innocuous, its name adopted by nail polishes, Chelsea boots, and fountain pens.” Dan Piepenbring on Lady C: The Long, Sensational Life of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

“It was alarming, the extent to which this person never left the E-250, and impressive. So much of living in a vehicle is about learning not to seem to exist.” Kristin Dombek on love, shit, and parking. buff.ly/dim0Gba

“One of our allies One of the United Nations Heroic anti-Axis country First to fight Japan.” From clues for the answer “CHINA” that have appeared in the New York Times crossword puzzle since 1942. harpers.org/archive/2026...

“While Forster chose silence—his gay love story Maurice was withheld from publication for nearly sixty years—Francis King chose discretion.” Charlie Tyson on Francis King’s arts of concealment.

“It was hard for me to believe that any of my crewmates thought of Mars as a mere refuge for the survivors of an apocalypse. Nor did they seem to be adherents of Musk’s brand of techno-nihilism, preferring a frozen world of Tesla Bots to a salvaged Earth.”

“The response you generally get from Puy du Fou apologists to accusations that the park is falsifying the historical record to serve a sinister right-wing agenda is: lighten up.” Nat Segnit on the fascist politics behind France’s favorite amusement park.

Every month in our Findings column, Rafil Kroll-Zaidi presents a constellation of the most—and least—important scientific discoveries. buff.ly/Wlu1mBl

“In reality, Alberta is policy-locked, not landlocked, by the federal government.” From a bulletin titled “Top Most Asked Questions” that was issued in December by the Albertan Prosperity Project. harpers.org/archive/2026...

“What is certain, however, is that handing more and more authority to billionaires will not revive the shared, soaring prosperity of the past. Only robust democracy can do that.” Thomas Frank on the March for Billionaires. harpers.org/archive/2026...

"I got the sense that what motivated my crewmates was, above all, a conviction that Mars would transform us, no matter what kind of society would eventually take hold there." — @elenamsb.bsky.social for @harpers.bsky.social harpers.org/archive/2026...

From this month’s Harper’s Index. buff.ly/cHB4pRs

“The most corrupted among us have long since abandoned Chatterley as a totem of smut. Pornographers big and small have shunned it as source material: searches for “Chatterley” on Pornhub and OnlyFans return no results.” —Dan Piepenbring harpers.org/archive/2026...

“The uncertainty was the worst of it. But having declared that with a politician’s confidence, I’m not so sure.” From a new story by Joshua Cohen. harpers.org/archive/2026...

“What makes King’s constrained fictions compelling is that his discretion is not absolute. He is almost a quintessential English novelist of manners, coolly observant, slyly comic, straightforwardly realist in his approach. But not quite.” —Charlie Tyson

“She is prettier than you think, because her face is not the first thing you think of. It is, after all, not the main thing that supposedly earns her a million pounds a month, although her mouth does its share of the work.” —Philippa Snow harpers.org/archive/2026...

“It’s hard to shake the feeling that a fantasy version of French history, drenched in missionary zeal and longing for a lost monarchy, is being advanced at the expense of a secular, republican modernity construed as ruinous.” —Nat Segnit

“I would like to explain why it was that I paid my taxes at the start of the twenty-first century, when so many of my peers risked both fortune and freedom to make their heroic stand.” —Ben Metcalf (April 2008) harpers.org/archive/2008...

“I got the sense that what motivated my crewmates was, above all, a conviction that Mars would transform us, no matter what kind of society would eventually take hold there.” @elenamsb.bsky.social reports from a simulated Martian settlement in Utah.

“Normally, I do not look to Anglo-Canadians for inspiration—and certainly not to a former central banker with center-right economic leanings.” Read John R. MacArthur’s latest Publisher’s Note on the twisted rhetoric of Mark Carney. harpers.org/2026/04/the-...

“Unless our bodies know what’s up, and our friends know what’s up, and our enemies know best who we are, and away is actually the fakeness we lament when we’re choosing the great loneliness.” —Kristin Dombek buff.ly/dim0Gba

“Unless our bodies know what’s up, and our friends know what’s up, and our enemies know best who we are, and away is actually the fakeness we lament when we’re choosing the great loneliness.” —Kristin Dombek

“The government is bought and paid for by members of the oldest generation, and it is organized for their sake. There is no way to separate the age of our elites from their ascendancy.” @samuelmoyn.bsky.social on America’s gerontocratic crisis

In our May Issue: Samuel Moyn on America’s gerontocracy; Elena Saavedra Buckley reports on a Mars settlement simulation; Kristin Dombek on love, shit, and parking; Nat Segnit on a controversial French theme park; Charlie Tyson on Francis King; and more. harpers.org/archive/2026...

Gaby Del Valle ( @gabydvj.bsky.social ), who covered the American Conservation Coalition for our April issue, spoke with Jess Bergman about reporting from conservative events, the young new right, and Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy. buff.ly/Zq6UP0I

“And then there was the limp, damp baguette offered each day at lunch. I felt myself becoming vulnerable to sadness.” From a memoir by Nicolas Sarkozy recounting the twenty days he spent incarcerated on corruption charges.

“An interview is not an ideal forum for fiction. But what sort of recording device is the novel? A poor one, at least from the perspective of our tech-inflected present.” @hannahkgold.bsky.social on Ben Lerner’s fourth novel Transcription.

“It seemed to be a Goldilocks problem. People who had seen death up close kept their distance. And people who hadn’t yet had much exposure to it kept their innocence. I had made the mistake of understanding a little but not enough.” — @calebcrain.bsky.social

“Reading the novel feels like being stuck at the DMV, but instead of waiting for a new license, you’re trying to find out why your kidneys were replaced without your consent. Understandably, Bruno tries to kill himself.” —Dan Piepenbring

“These conditions increasingly favor Russia, which has opted to mete out death piecemeal, launching incremental assaults at points spread out along the six-hundred-mile front line to create instability and prevent Ukraine from regrouping.” — @egea.bsky.social

“Suddenly it becomes clear how punitive the ordinary way of thinking about time has always been. Now there are as many hours in your day in which to listen to Schubert as you can stand.” From a new story by @calebcrain.bsky.social.

“What distinguishes the ACC’s project is a kind of romantic nationalism that emphasizes the splendor of the American landscape and the moral values it symbolizes.” @gabydvj.bsky.social reports on the conservative environmentalism movement.

“Why isn’t the crazy and illegal attack on Iran enough to get people thinking impeachment?” asked John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s. At a legal symposium in Washington D.C., MacArthur, alongside Ralph Nader and others, discussed the possibility of impeachment. buff.ly/LqaHVgj

“It was like a plane or a huge truck was coming at you, but you had no idea where it was coming from or how to escape it.” From descriptions of assaults using long-range acoustic devices given by their human targets.

“With his tough talk, squeaky voice, diminutive stature, and penchant for fascist fashion, Bovino was a roving, live-action crisis of masculinity—a perfect avatar of the second Trump Administration.” — @brookfiles.bsky.social

“From my window I could no longer see the sky, a bird in flight, or a tree trembling in the wind. I was struck by the complete absence of color.” From a memoir by Nicolas Sarkozy recounting the twenty days he spent incarcerated on corruption charges.

“In the novel, our era’s all-consuming screen complex is merely another node in the development of technologies for disseminating and preserving culture: radio, theater, oral and written traditions, and that most ancient of linguistic vectors—dads.” — @hannahkgold.bsky.social

“A large part of becoming a philosopher consists of being socialized into the field’s ethos of niggling protestation—the duty to call one another out on even the most trivial and the most transparently social of bluffs, as soon as they’re uttered.” —Caleb Crain

“Nine years on, the ACC has grown from little more than a blog into a national network of almost one hundred branches, complete with a lobbying arm, a few dozen full-time staffers, a $5 million operating budget, and close allies in the White House.” — @gabydvj.bsky.social