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A Nice, Provocative Silence

The author of "Cahokia Jazz" reflects on the similarities between historical fiction and science fiction, and the imaginative space opened by archival silences.
A pixellated landscape of buildings, spaceships, and the moon form the background of the coverpage for this article, titled "How Sci-Fi Worlds Have Changed WIth Us"

Who Killed the World?

Explore science fiction worlds from the last few decades – and what these fictional settings tell us about ourselves.
Cover of "James" by Percival Everett.

Kierkegaard on the Mississippi 

Percival Everett refashions a Mark Twain classic.
Victorian telegraph operator.

What Mark Zuckerberg Should Learn From 19th-Century Telegraph Operators

No, really.
Longshoremen on their lunch hour at the San Francisco docks.

Jack London, "Martin Eden" and The Liberal Education in US life

In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life.
Séance with spirit manifestation, 1872, by John Beattie.

Immortalizing Words

Henry James, spiritualism, and the afterlife.
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Tunnel Vision

When you dig beyond all purpose, digging becomes the purpose.
Cover of "James" by Percival Everett

Gulp Fiction, or Into the Missouri-verse

On Percival Everett’s “James.”

The Great American Novels

136 books that made America think.
Girls reading "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

Betty Smith Enchanted a Generation of Readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’

No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation.
A hand-drawn, slightly abstract image of a pink typewriter, using a QWERTY keyboard.

Page Against the Machine

Dan Sinykin’s history of corporate fiction.
Jewish moneylender choking debtor

"A Fiendish Fascination"

The representation of Jews in antebellum popular culture reveals that many Americans found them both cartoonishly villainous and enticingly exotic.
Collage of African Americans' faces.

Specters of the Mythic South

How plantation fiction fixed ghost stories to Black Americans.
A pink, fluffy cloud raining colorful cubes, reminiscent of pieces of data.

What Do We Owe? Generosity, Attribution, and the Perilous Invisibility of Research Infrastructure

Attribution can make visible the vast infrastructure of research and display how much hard-won knowledge, including creative endeavor, it has faciliated.
Bud Schulberg testifying before HUAC.

During the 2023 Writers Strike, This Book Helped Me Understand the Depravities of Hollywood

A 1941 novel by a former Communist Party member about the dog-eat-dog scumbaggery of movie executives and the lying and artless bragging that Hollywood runs on.
Painting by Pablo Ventura called "War Souvenirs #9" depicting a soldier kissing a woman, another with a bicycle, and World War II propaganda posters.

Writing Under Fire

For a full understanding of any historical period, we must read the literature written while its events were still unfolding.
Illustration of multiple people drawing the same cover of a book

Big Publishing Killed the Author

How corporations wrested creative control from writers and editors—to produce less interesting books.
A photograph of Louisa May Alcott.

Nonfiction That Rivals Little Women: The Forgotten Essays of Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott is best known for Little Women, but she earned her first taste of celebrity as an essayist.
Captain Lightfood on horseback firing a pistol.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot: The American Creation of Irish Outlaw Folk Heroes

Martin’s confession relates outlaw adventures that appear to be original. But were they real? 
Tennessee Williams

How Thomas Lanier Williams Became Tennessee

A collection of previously unpublished stories offers a portrait of the playwright as a young artist.
Illustrated portrait of Don DeLillo against a firey background.

Secret Histories

Don DeLillo's Cold Wars.
Cormac McCarthy.

Cormac McCarthy’s Unforgiving Parables of American Empire

He demonstrated how the frontier wasn’t an incubator of democratic equality but a place of unrelenting pain, cruelty, and suffering.
The cover of The Black Mask magazine, June 1, 1923, featuring a hooded Klan member.

The Gumshoes Who Took On the Klan

In the pages of "Black Mask" magazine, the Continental Op and Race Williams fought the KKK even as they shared its love of vigilante justice.
Daguerreotype of a young woman, with her head resting on her hand.

In Love with a Daguerreotype

A nineteenth-century twist on love at first sight.
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Pieces of the Past

Dispatches from a spine-tingling day of visits to the places where James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, and Thomas Cole created their most famous works.
Diagram with three mollusks

Edgar Allan Poe: Pioneering Mollusk Scientist

Poe’s work reminds us that the separation of “Arts” and “Sciences” into discrete discourses of knowledge is itself a quite recent invention.
Black and white photo of Lydia Maria Child reading a book

Living in Words

A new biography explores the work of the influential abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, who wrote about the social, political, and cultural issues of her time.
Illustration of fantasy elements including a maze and a crystal ball from a "choose-your-own-adventure" scene from a book.

The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books

How a best-selling series gave young readers a new sense of agency.
Invisible Man book cover with Ralph Ellison on the back

Broke and Blowing Deadlines

How Ralph Ellison got Invisible Man into the canon.
Drawing of a group of young boys around a table, entitled "Mischievous Matt," from a story paper.

Dime Novels and Story Papers for Kids

The rise of popular literature for children put a story, a role model, and a set of values in a young boy’s pocket.

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