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Image by Hans Glaser depicting a blood rain that supposedly occurred near Dinkelsbühl in Germany’s Franconia region in 1554.

Strange Gods: Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned

Rains of blood and frogs, mysterious disappearances, objects in the sky: these were the anomalies that fascinated Charles Fort in his Book of the Damned.
by Joshua Blu Buhs via The Public Domain Review on November 26, 2024

How Woodrow Wilson’s Privileged Southern Upbringing Influenced His Love Life

In Wilson’s chivalric framework, women were required to be submissive precisely so that men could protect the weaker sex.
by Christopher Cox via Literary Hub on November 8, 2024
A sketch of a woman praying outside.

“To Eat This Big Universe as Her Oyster”

Margaret Fuller and the first major work of American feminism.
by Randall Fuller via The Public Domain Review on October 29, 2024
Painting of Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copley.

Mercy Otis Warren, America’s First Female Historian

At the prodding of John and Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren took on a massive project: writing a comprehensive history of the Revolutionary War.
by Nancy Rubin Stuart via The Saturday Evening Post on March 18, 2024

The Great American Novels

136 books that made America think.
via The Atlantic on March 14, 2024
Elon Musk's face edited onto Apple advertisements.

A Bullshit Genius

On Walter Isaacson’s biographical project.
by Oscar Schwartz via The Drift on March 12, 2024
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.
by Mitch Therieau via Bookforum on February 6, 2024
Tom Wolfe in profile against the New York City skyline.

The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative

Tom Wolfe was no radical.
by Osita Nwanevu via The New Republic on January 5, 2024
Display of banned books or censored books at Books Inc independent bookstore.
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Book Bans Aren't the Only Threat to Literature in Classrooms

Literature is key to a healthy democracy, but schools are leaving books behind.
by Jonna Perrillo, Andrew Newman via Made By History on October 6, 2023
Lionel Trilling

Liberalism in Mourning

Lionel Trilling crystallizes the cynical Cold War liberalism that sacrificed idealism for self-restraint.
by Samuel Moyn via Boston Review on August 30, 2023
Television with LeVar Burton holding book and surrounded by rainbows.

How An Untested, Cash-Strapped TV Show About Books Became An American Classic

Despite facing political headwinds and raising 'suspicion' among publishers, 'Reading Rainbow' introduced generations of American kids to books.
by Jonathan Taylor via Los Angeles Times on July 11, 2023
Panting of a woman lounging with a book, titled “Dolce far niente” (The Sweetness of Doing Nothing), by Auguste Toulmouche, 1877.

We’re Distracted. That’s Nothing New.

Ever since Thoreau headed to Walden, our attention has been wandering.
by Caleb Smith via The Chronicle of Higher Education on March 10, 2023

The Making of Norman Mailer

The young man went to war and became a novelist. But did he ever really come back?
by David Denby via The New Yorker on December 19, 2022
Octavia E. Butler.

The Spectacular Life of Octavia E. Butler

The story of the girl who grew up in Pasadena, took the bus, loved her mom and grandmother, and wrote herself into the world.
by E. Alex Jung via Vulture on November 21, 2022
Rob McKuen infront of a background composed of spines of his books.

Fifty Years Ago, He Was America’s Most Famous Writer. Why Haven’t You Ever Heard of Him?

He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Then he disappeared.
by Dan Kois via Slate on October 10, 2022
Edna St. Vincent Millay poses for a portrait among magnolia blossoms.

The Wondrous and Mundane Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Her private writing offers another, more idiosyncratic angle to understand the famed poet.
by Apoorva Tadepalli via The Nation on August 3, 2022
Charles Chesnutt portrait

The Atlantic Writers Project: Charles Chesnutt

A contemporary Atlantic writer reflects on one of the voices from the magazine's archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.
by Imani Perry via The Atlantic on July 11, 2022
Invisible Man book cover with Ralph Ellison on the back

Broke and Blowing Deadlines

How Ralph Ellison got Invisible Man into the canon.
by Anne Trubek via Notes From A Small Press on June 29, 2022
Watercolor portrait of Bronson Alcott, a 19th century American philosopher and educator.

New England Ecstasies

The transcendentalists thought all human inspiration was divine, all nature a miracle.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on February 16, 2022
Zora Neale Hurston browsing books at a book fair, looking at a book called "American Stuff."

The Zora Neale Hurston We Don’t Talk About

In the new nonfiction collection “You Don’t Know Us Negroes,” what emerges is a writer who mastered a Black idiom but seldom championed race pride.
by Lauren Michele Jackson via The New Yorker on February 14, 2022
Handwritten magazine index

‘Index, A History of the’ Review: List-O-Mania

At the back of the book, the index provides a space for reference—and sometimes revenge.
by Ben Yagoda via The Wall Street Journal on February 11, 2022
Richard Wright.

Outcasts and Desperados

Reflections on Richard Wright’s recently published novel, "The Man Who Lived Underground."
by Adam Shatz via London Review of Books on October 4, 2021
QAnon proponent and Trump supporters

Bad Information

Conspiracy theories like QAnon are ultimately a social problem rather than a cognitive one. We should blame politics, not the faulty reasoning of individuals.
by Nicolas Guilhot via Boston Review on August 23, 2021
Abstract drawing of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe, Crank Scientist

The great discoveries of the age captivated Poe’s imagination. He almost always misunderstood them.
by Colin Dickey via The New Republic on July 21, 2021
Richard Jean So and the cover of his book "Redlining Culture"

The History of Publishing Is a History of Racial Inequality

A conversation with Richard Jean So about combining data and literary analysis to understand how the publishing industry came to be dominated by white writers. 
by Richard Jean So, Rosemarie Ho via The Nation on May 27, 2021
Photographs and a cover of Spectra, a literary magazine.

Spectra: The Poetry Movement That Was All a Hoax

In the experimental world of modernist poetry, literary journals were vulnerable to fake submissions.
by Ashawnta Jackson via JSTOR Daily on April 6, 2021
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

The Poetics of Abolition

For poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, as for the Black Romantics, history is the repetition of anti-Black violence that has yet to be abolished.
by Manu Samriti Chander via Public Books on March 16, 2021
Gerd Stern.

Ping Pong of the Abyss

Gerd Stern, the Beats, and the psychiatric institution.
by Gabby Kiser via The Beat Museum on February 9, 2021
A collage of book covers.

The Radical Origins of Self-Help Literature

How did the genre of self-help go from one focused on collective empowerment to one serving the class hierarchy as it stands?
by Jennifer Wilson via The Nation on November 17, 2020
A movie still featuring a close-up of two actors from The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence: How a US Classic Defined Its Era

Cameron Laux looks at how The Age of Innocence – published 100 years ago – marked a pivotal moment in US history.
by Cameron Laux via BBC News on September 23, 2020
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