THE MAN WHO DIED FOR THE LIBERAL ARTS
The Atlantic|May 2024
Chugging through Pacific waters in February 1942, the USS Crescent City was ferrying construction equipment and Navy personnel to Pearl Harbor, dispatched there to assist in repairing the severely damaged naval base after the Japanese attack.
DAVID SHRIBMAN
THE MAN WHO DIED FOR THE LIBERAL ARTS

A young ensign—“real eager to get off that ship and get into action,” in the recollection of an enlisted Navy man who encountered him—sat down and wrote a letter to his younger brother, who one day would be my father.

Philip Alvan Shribman, a recent graduate of Dartmouth and just a month away from his 22nd birthday, was not worldly but understood that he had been thrust into a world conflict that was more than a contest of arms. At stake were the life, customs, and values that he knew. He was a quiet young man, taciturn in the old New England way, but he had much to say in this letter, written from the precipice of battle to a brother on the precipice of adulthood. His scrawl consumed five pages of Navy stationery.

“It’s growing on me with increasing rapidity that you’re about set to go to college,” he wrote to his brother, Dick, then living with my grandparents in Salem, Massachusetts, “and tho I’m one hell of a guy to talk—and tho I hate preaching—let me just write this & we’ll call it quits.”

He acknowledged from the start that “this letter won’t do much good”—a letter that, in the eight decades since it was written, has been read by three generations of my family. In it, Phil Shribman set out the virtues and values of the liberal arts at a time when universities from coast to coast were transitioning into training grounds for America’s armed forces.

“What you’ll learn in college won’t be worth a God-damned,” Phil told Dick. “But you’ll learn a way of life perhaps—a way to get on with people—an appreciation perhaps for just one thing: music, art, a book—all of this is bound to be unconscious learning— it’s part of a liberal education in the broad sense of the term.”

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 2024 من The Atlantic.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 2024 من The Atlantic.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

المزيد من القصص من THE ATLANTIC مشاهدة الكل
Catching the Carjackers - On the road with an elite police unit as it combats a crime wave
The Atlantic

Catching the Carjackers - On the road with an elite police unit as it combats a crime wave

On August 7, 2022, Shantise Summers arrived home from a night out with friends around 2:40 a.m. As she walked from her car toward her apartment in Oxon Hill, a Maryland neighborhood just southeast of Washington, D.C., she heard footsteps behind her. She turned and saw two men in ski masks. One put a gun to her face; she could feel the metal pressing against her chin. He demanded her phone, wallet, keys, and Apple Watch. She quickly handed them over, and they drove off in her 2019 Honda Accord.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
The Most Remote Place in the World - Point Nemo is Earth's official "middle of nowhere." A lot seems to be going on there.
The Atlantic

The Most Remote Place in the World - Point Nemo is Earth's official "middle of nowhere." A lot seems to be going on there.

It’s called the “longest-swim problem”: If you had to drop someone at the place in the ocean farthest from any speck of land—the remotest spot on Earth—where would that place be? The answer, proposed only a few decades ago, is a location in the South Pacific with the coordinates 48 52.5291ᤩS 123 23.5116ᤩW: the “oceanic point of inaccessibility,” to use the formal name. It doesn’t get many visitors. But one morning last year, I met several people who had just come from there.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
You Are Going to Die - Oliver Burkeman has become an unlikely self-help guru by reminding everyone of their mortality.
The Atlantic

You Are Going to Die - Oliver Burkeman has become an unlikely self-help guru by reminding everyone of their mortality.

"The average human lifespan," Oliver Burkeman begins his 2021 megabest seller, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, "is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short." In that relatively brief period, he does not want you to maximize your output at work or optimize your leisure activities for supreme enjoyment. He does not want you to wake up at 5 a.m. or block out your schedule in a strictly labeled timeline.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
Washington's Nightmare - Donald Trump is the tyrant the first president feared.
The Atlantic

Washington's Nightmare - Donald Trump is the tyrant the first president feared.

Last November, during a symposium at Mount Vernon on democracy, John Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general who served as Donald Trump's second chief of staff, spoke about George Washington's historic accomplishments— his leadership and victory in the Revolutionary War, his vision of what an American president should be. And then Kelly offered a simple, three-word summary of Washington's most important contribution to the nation he liberated.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books - To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.
The Atlantic

The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books - To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University's required greatbooks course, since 1988. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading, College kids have never read everything they're assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames's students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem.

time-read
9 mins  |
November 2024
What Zoya Sees
The Atlantic

What Zoya Sees

Long a fearless critic of Israeli society, since October 7 Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi has made wrenching portraits of her nation's sufferingand become a target of protest.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
Malcolm Gladwell, Meet Mark Zuckerberg
The Atlantic

Malcolm Gladwell, Meet Mark Zuckerberg

The writer’ insistence on ignoring the web is an even bigger blind spot today than it was when The Tipping Point came out.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
Alan Hollinghurst's Lost England
The Atlantic

Alan Hollinghurst's Lost England

In his new novel, the present isnt much better than the past—and its a lot less sexy.

time-read
8 mins  |
November 2024
Scent of a Man
The Atlantic

Scent of a Man

In a new memoir, Al Pacino promises to reveal the person behind the actor. But is he holding something back?

time-read
5 mins  |
November 2024
THE RIGHT-WING PLAN TO MAKE EVERYONE AN INFORMANT
The Atlantic

THE RIGHT-WING PLAN TO MAKE EVERYONE AN INFORMANT

In Texas and elsewhere, new laws and policies have encouraged neighbors to report neighbors to the government.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024