HUMANITIES: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities

Cover Story

Suburban Dwelling

John Cheever was the bard of the backyard

Peter Tonguette

HUMANITIES, Summer 2021, Volume 42, Number 3

Swimming Pool, Beverly Hills

A child of the Depression, John Cheever became a trenchant observer of the American upper-middle class in short stories and novels. He received the Pulitzer Prize for the 1978 collection of his short stories. His first published story appeared in the New Republic in 1935.

—Joe Scherschel / The LIFE Picture Collection / Shutterstock

Current Issue

Beach umbrellas.

Some are reading and some are swimming in the summer issue of Humanities.

—Private Collection © T. S. Harris / Bridgeman Images

Volume 42, Issue 3

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The pirate next door.

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Edmund Wilson’s Big Idea: A Series of Books Devoted to Classic American Writing. It Almost Didn’t Happen.

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Why Spinoza Was Excommunicated

How America Became “A City Upon a Hill”

The rise and fall of Perry Miller

Abram Van Engen

The Messy Genius of W. H. Auden

A disheveled poet crafted verse of exquisite order.

World War I Changed America and Transformed Its Role in International Relations

So why don't we pay more attention to it?

Meredith Hindley