literature — Bunk History

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Willa Cather wearing a mink shawl and a large hat in Paris

Prairie Swooner

The hardscrabble origins and unique vision of novelist Willa Cather.

by Eric Banks via Bookforum on February 6, 2024

Black and white portrait of Jones Very

The Voice of Unfiltered Spirit

In the poetry of Jones Very, whom his contemporaries considered “eccentric” and “mad," the self is detached from everything by an intoxicated egoism.

by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on January 18, 2024

A faux Brazilian village constructed for Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici on the banks of the Seine in Rouen, France, and inhabited by fifty Tupinambá people who were forcibly brought there from Brazil, 1550.

The Discovery of Europe

A new book investigates the indigenous Americans who were brought to or traveled to Europe in the 1500s—a story central to the beginning of globalization.

by Álvaro Enrigue via New York Review of Books on December 28, 2023

Silhouette of Oppenheimer wearing a fedora.

How Do We Know the Motorman Is Not Insane?

Oppenheimer and the demon heart of power.

by James Robins via The Dreadnought on December 20, 2023

Israel Joshua Singer.

The Forgotten Giant of Yiddish Fiction

Though his younger brother Isaac Bashevis Singer eventually eclipsed him, Israel Joshua Singer excelled at showing characters buffeted by the tides of history.

by Adam Kirsch via The New Yorker on November 27, 2023

Blanche and Alfred Knopf

Toward the Next Literary Mafia

Understanding history can help us understand what will be necessary if we’re serious about finally having a more diverse, less exclusionary publishing industry.

by Josh Lambert via Public Books on November 21, 2023

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.

by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on November 15, 2023

Willa Cather sitting on a bench, wearing a fur scarf and feathered hat and looking at the camera

Never-Ending Nostalgia: Who and What Inspired Willa Cather

On the early years of America's chronicler of the Great Plains.

by Benjamin Taylor via Literary Hub on November 15, 2023

Illustration of Chalude Shannon, William Weaver, and Italo Calvino, placed on a background of binary code

Language Machinery: Who Will Attend to the Machine's Writing?

The ultimate semantic receivers, selectors, and transmitters are still us.

by Richard Hughes Gibson via The Hedgehog Review on November 7, 2023

Statue of Paul Revere on Boston's Freedom Trail.

On the Trail—to Freedom?

Touring the palimpsests of cities.

by Charlie Riggs via The Hedgehog Review on November 1, 2023

Lenore Kandel’

The Forgotten Poet at the Center of San Francisco’s Longest Obscenity Trial

Amid Reagan’s late-sixties crackdown on the California counterculture, a jury was tasked with deciding whether Lenore Kandel’s psychedelic sex poems had “redeeming social importance.”

by Joy Lanzendorfer via The New Yorker on October 13, 2023

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Great Zimbabwe, circa 1996; photograph by Graham Smith.

Finding My Roots

The storytellers who taught me over the course of my career all knew how to bring Black history vividly to life.

by Henry Louis Gates Jr. via New York Review of Books on September 29, 2023

What Even Is "Leadership"?

And why won't all the worst people stop talking about it?

by Charles Petersen via Making History on September 21, 2023

Chairs on top of tables in an empty classroom

Are A.P. Classes a Waste of Time?

Advanced Placement courses are no recipe for igniting the intellect beyond high school. They’re a recipe for extinguishing it.

by Aaron R. Hanlon via The New Republic on September 6, 2023

The Garden Cafeteria, New York City.

Jews and Joe

From European streets to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Jews have been deeply involved in the history of coffee and the café scene.

by Orge Castellano via Tablet on August 29, 2023

An old journal with cursive writing on the pages

Slanting the History of Handwriting

Whatever writing is today, it is not self-evident. But writing by hand did not simply continue to “advance” until it inevitably began to erode.

by Sonja Drimmer via Public Books on August 9, 2023

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?

by Jerry Kuntz via Commonplace on August 8, 2023

Edgar Allan Poe

Poe vs. Himself: On the Writer’s One-Sided War with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The story of the Little Longfellow War.

by Anne Whitehouse via Literary Hub on July 24, 2023

Basketball players resting on court

Game Changer

On the mismatched sporting advice of Clair Bee and John R. Tunis.

by Dan McQuade via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 10, 2023

The stairs leading to the segregated section of a cinema in Belzoni, Mississippi, in 1939.

The Writers Who Went Undercover to Show America Its Ugly Side

In the 1940s, a series of books tried to use the conventions of detective fiction to expose the degree of prejudice in postwar America.

by Samuel G. Freedman via The Atlantic on July 10, 2023

An illustration of Anthony Comstock, published in Puck magazine in 1906.

The 150-Year-Old Comstock Act Could Transform the Abortion Debate

Once considered a relic of moral panics past, the 1873 law criminalized sending "obscene, lewd or lascivious" materials through the mail.

by Ellen Wexler via Smithsonian on June 15, 2023

Illustration of a man with a shovel working a farm; the background shows scenes of family and communal life

Deep States

The old Midwest was a place animated by the belief that a self-governing republic is the best regime for man.

by Wilfred M. McClay via Claremont Review of Books on May 31, 2023

African American school children at Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington at the US Capitol, 1899.

Why the Age of Revolution Loved the Classical World

Radicals in the Age of Revolution saw the classical world as a common inheritance that could aid their fight for liberty.

by Francesca Langer via Aeon on May 30, 2023

U.S. Supreme Court building, left, and Kurt Vonnegut, right.

The Largely Forgotten Book Ban Case That Went Up to the Supreme Court

Library book bans are fueling national fights and a new Florida lawsuit. But only one case has come before the Supreme Court: Island Trees v. Pico.

by Anthony Aycock via Retropolis on May 20, 2023

Drawing of Phillis Wheatley writing at a desk.

The Great American Poet Who Was Named After a Slave Ship

A new biography of Phillis Wheatley places her in her era and shows the ways she used poetry to criticize the existence of slavery.

by Tiya Miles via The Atlantic on April 22, 2023

Native American and Black girls tossing around a medicine ball in a circle.

Right Living, Right Acting, and Right Thinking

How Black women used exercise to achieve civic goals in the late nineteenth century.

by Ava Purkiss via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 17, 2023

A painting of a Victorian-style room with an ornate bookshelf and books sitting on a table.

A Degenerate Assemblage

How Charles Lamb and his collection of well-loved books inspired a generation of American collectors.

by Anthony Grafton via London Review of Books on April 13, 2023

The sillhouette of a Civil War statue on a night sky.

The Spirit of Appomattox

Why is Shelby Foote's Civil War subject to so much contemporary debate?

by Jonathan Clarke via The Hedgehog Review on March 1, 2023

German observation balloon launched near the Somme, September 1916.

Why a Spy Balloon Inspires Such Fear and Fascination

When it comes to protecting our personal privacy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

by Alison Byerly via HNN on February 19, 2023

Map of John Proctor's 15 acres of property in Ipswich, MA

"The Crucible" and John and Elizabeth Proctor of Salem

It is worth digging a bit deeper into the family matters between John and Elizabeth.

by Benjamin Ray via Commonplace on February 7, 2023

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