Direct Mail Letter Copy

September

Dear Colleague:

Congratulations on your recent election to Phi Beta Kappa and the fine achievement it represents. I am writing to let you know that as a new member you are eligible for low introductory rates to The American Scholar, the Quarterly for Independent Thinkers, published since 1932 by Phi Beta Kappa.

As one of the last refuges for the nonacademic essay, The American Scholar has, during its 65-year-history, published most of this century’s greatest writers including Thomas Mann, John Updike, Robert Penn Warren, I.A. Richards, Margaret Mead, and Saul Bellow. During the last few years our readers have heard from Cynthia Ozick on public and private intellectuals; from Freeman Dyson on the beleaguered scientific establishment; from Gertrude Himmelfarb on George Eliot; and from Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the drug war.

The Scholar also prides itself on publishing witty and idiosyncratic essays about everything from the filming of The African Queen (Bogart hated the tsetse flies)

To the parallels between the Talmud and the Internet (two great chat rooms; read about them in a forthcoming issue).

The Washington Post has said of the Scholar, “give it a chance and it will become an addiction.” Jonathan Yardley says that of all the magazines he receives, it is the “only one that regularly delivers what it promises.”
By subscribing today, you will participate in a particularly historic year at the Scholar. You will receive the final issue in the distinguished 23-year-career of editor Joseph Epstein, who has been called “one of the finest essayists—if not the single finest—at work today in the English language.” You will also receive the inaugural issue edited by the award-winning writer Anne Fadiman. Stephen G. Smith, former editor of Civilizations, calls Fadiman’s editing “so painstaking and sensitive that you find yourself apologizing if you give her anything less than your best work.”

We hope you will start a new tradition for yourself and Phi Beta Kappa at this historic time by completing and returning the enclosed card today.

Sincerely, Peggy Ferrin
For The American Scholar