Changing Tides
Recession indicators, papal succession, the environmental movement, and a new book from Harper’s senior editor Joe Kloc
Timeless stories from our 175-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
Papal Concerns
[August 2014]
“The fight between the Church’s male hierarchy and its women religious is nearly as old as the institution itself.”
Read “Francis and the Nuns” by Mary Gordon
[April 1994]
John Paul II’s stern sexual doctrine prompts an American Catholic to ask a few further questions about the discipline of the spirit and the pleasures of the flesh.
Read “Arguing With the Pope” by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
[March 2015]
A selection from The Future of the Catholic Church with Pope Francis, by Garry Wills.
Read “Church Going” by Garry Wills
[May 2025]
In our May issue, Emily Harnett reports on the first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis.
Recession Indicators
[August 2015]
“Recessions always create a trailing effect in which joblessness and poverty extend past the worst part of a downturn.”
Read “What Recovery?” by Kai Wright
[February 2008]
On priming the markets for tomorrow’s next big crash.
Read “The Next Bubble” by Eric Janszen
[January 1999]
On (not) getting by in America.
Read “Nickel-and-Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich
[February 1931]
An account of one man’s attempt to find a job during the Great Depression.
Read “The American System in Job-Land” by Neil Staebler
Down to Earth
[December 1977]
The story behind the Storm King Mountain controversy and the birthplace of the environmental movement.
Read “Environmentalism and the Leisure Class” by William Tucker
[July 1997]
On bird-watching and the redemptive pain of loving the natural world.
Read “Bird-Watching As a Blood Sport” by David James Duncan
[November 2015]
“The environmental challenges we face today differ from those we faced a century ago. Our narratives must change, too.”
Read Rethinking Extinction by James K. Boyce
[December 2016]
On feral faith in the age of climate change.
Read “The Priest in the Trees” by Fred Bahnson
Lost at Sea
On April 15th, Harper’s senior editor Joe Kloc and Harper’s contributor Jessica Bruder convened at the New York Historical Society, where they spoke about Kloc’s recently-published book, Lost at Sea: Poverty and Paradise Collide at the Edge of America. Lost at Sea, a deeply personal nine-year account of the lives of an unhoused community living on abandoned boats off the California coast, emerged from Kloc’s National Magazine Award-nominated feature.
[May 2019]
“A few miles north of San Francisco, off the coast of Sausalito, is Richardson Bay, a saltwater estuary where roughly one hundred people live out of sight from the world. Known as anchor-outs, they make their homes a quarter mile from the shore, on abandoned and unseaworthy vessels, doing their best, with little or no money, to survive. Life is not easy.”
Read “Lost at Sea” by Joe Kloc
[August 2014]
“On Thanksgiving Day of 2010, Linda May sat alone in a trailer in New River, Arizona. At sixty, the silver-haired grandmother lacked electricity and running water. She couldn’t find work. Her unemployment benefits had run out, and her daughter’s family, with whom she had lived for many years while holding a series of low-wage jobs, had recently downsized to a smaller apartment. There wasn’t enough room to move back in with them.”
Read “The End of Retirement” by Jessica Bruder