You’re looking for Integer/parseInt.
user=> (map #(Integer/parseInt %) ["1" "2" "3" "4"])
(1 2 3 4)
You have to wrap Integer/parseInt in an anonymous function because Java methods aren’t functions.
read-string would also work in this case:
user=> (map read-string ["1" "2" "3" "4"])
(1 2 3 4)
read-string reads any object from a string, not just integers. So, if you did (read-string "1.0") you’d get back a double. When reading from outside sources, it’s usually better to limit what can be read to precisely what you need, which is an integer in this case. Therefore, I recommend using my first example.