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The Notorious Book that Ties the Right to the Far Right

The enduring popularity of "The Camp of the Saints" sheds light on nativists' historical opposition to immigration.
original

At Home With Ursula Le Guin

Her novels featured dragons and wizards, but they were also deeply grounded in indigenous American ways of thought.

The Lost Giant of American Literature

A major black novelist made a remarkable début. How did he disappear?

Same As It Ever Was: Orientalism Forty Years Later

On Edward Said, othering, and the depictions of Arabs in America.

The Impossibility of Knowing Mark Twain

Even Twain's own autobiography cannot reveal the whole truth of the literary legend.

Borne Back Into the Past

Mike St. Thomas reviews ‘Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald.'

Arthur Mervin, Bankrupt

An 18th-century novel explores how American society handles capitalism's collateral damage — and who deserves a second chance.
Telephone from 1896

Want to Guess When the First Telephone Appeared in Literature?

It's probably further back than you think.
Title page and verso of the first edition of "A Christmas Carol."

A Plea to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories

Though the practice is now more associated with Halloween, spooking out your family is well within the Christmas spirit.

Zora Neale Hurston: “A Genius of the South”

John W. W. Zeiser reviews Peter Bagge's graphic biography "Fire!! The Zora Neale Hurston Story."

The Magic Mountain of Yiddish

Jacob Glatstein’s 1930s Yiddish novel ‘Homecoming at Twilight’ foresaw the coming doom.

The Short, Sad Story of Stanwix Melville

Piecing back together the forgotten history of Herman Melville's second son.
Edgar Alan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s Hatchet Jobs

The great short story writer and poet wrote many a book review.
Illustrated sperm whale with blue stripes of water.

The Original 1851 Reviews of Moby Dick

There was little indication 166 years ago that the book would enter the canon of great American fiction.

The True American

A review on the many publications about Henry David Thoreau's life for the bicentennial anniversary of his birthday.

The Miseducation of Henry Adams

Henry Adams's classic autobiography speaks to concerns of privilege, failure, and progress in his rapidly changing world.
Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau: A Radical for All Seasons

The surprising persistence of Henry David Thoreau.
Detail from the Russian poster for the 1957 Polish film Kanal, directed by Andrzej Wajda and set during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Photo by Getty

The Strange Political History of The ‘Underground’

Subterranean metaphors have been a powerful tool of political resistance. Today, is there anywhere left to hide?
Rows of typewriters in front of computers

How Literature Became Word Perfect

Before the word processor, perfect copy was the domain of the typist—not the literary genius.
Photograph of CIA Director George Bush and President Gerald R. Ford during a Meeting in the Cabinet Room

The Art of Administration: On Greg Barnhisel’s “Cold War Modernists”

Cold War modernists of the title do not seem to be the painters, sculptors, poets, and novelists who produced the original works.
Edgar Allan Poe

On Edgar Allan Poe

Crypts, entombments, physical morbidity: these nightmares are prominent in Poe’s tales, a fictional world in which the word that recurs most crucially is horror.
Typewriter with keys that have the letters "IA" on each of them.

How Iowa Flattened Literature

With help from the CIA, Paul Engle’s writing students battled Communism and eggheaded abstraction. The damage to writing still lingers.
Portrait of Ambrose Bierce with skull

One of America's Best

Ambrose Bierce deviated from the refined eeriness of English-style ghost stories for his haunting descriptions of fateful coincidence and horrific revelation.
Harriet Beecher Stowe imagining her characters.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the Art of Persuasion

Stowe’s novel shifted public opinion about slavery so dramatically that it has often been credited with fuelling the war that destroyed the institution.
Illustrated cover of the "Secret Garden"

100 Years of The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett's biographer considers her life and how personal tragedy underpinned the creation of her most famous work.
Chart describing links between writers, painters, muses, and more in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Friends, Lovers, and Family

The interconnected circles of writers, painters, muses, and more.
A cream colored map depicting the Middle Passage and trade routes between North America, South America, Africa, and Europe.

What Was Africa to Them?

How historians have understood Africa and the Black diaspora in global conversations about race and identity.
Photograph of Jack Kerouac looking into a shop window, by Allen Ginsberg.

Drive, Jack Kerouac Wrote

"On the Road" is a sad and somewhat self-consciously lyrical story about loneliness, insecurity, and failure. It’s also a story about guys who want to be with other guys.

Infectious Diseases Killed Victorian Children at Alarming Rates. Novels Show the Fragility of Health

Between 40% and 50% of children didn’t live past 5 in the US during the 19th century. Authors documented the common but no less gutting grief of losing a child.
Sketch of Mother and Infant, by J. Alden Weir, 1888.
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Keep Her Body from Pain and Her Mind from Worry

A reading list tracing the history of the birth control movement through novels.

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