Brenda Wineapple

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

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.

Kristen Green’s "The Devil’s Half Acre" recounts the story of a fugitive slave jail, and the enslaved woman, Mary Lumpkin, who came to own it.

The transcendentalists thought all human inspiration was divine, all nature a miracle.

A new edition of Emily Dickinson’s Master letters highlights what remains blazingly intense and mysterious in her work.

Family blessings are a curse, or they can be. The life of Henry Adams explained in his book Education.

Faulkner’s chroniclers have to reconcile the novelist’s often repellent political positions with the extraordinary meditations on race, violence, and cruelty in his fiction.

A new book persuasively argues that the Federalists’ attempt to squash opposition and the free flow of ideas was even more nefarious than we thought.

An historian debunks the vice president’s op-ed.

The Supreme Court justice may have been heralded by many of his progressive peers, but the legacy he left behind is far more ambiguous.

Johnson’s impeachment was driven by his refusal to rid the country of the lingering effects of slavery.

How the Spanish-American War laid the groundwork for American empire.