James Marcus is the executive editor of Harper's Magazine and the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut (2004), as well as seven translations from the Italian, the most recent being Giacomo Casanova's The Duel (2011). His work has appeared in Harper's, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Antioch Review, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, and Best American Essays 2009. He also edited and introduced_ Second Read: Writers Look Back at Classic Works of Reportage_ (2011). His next book, Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Emerson in Fifteen Installments, will be published in 2016.