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Mark Twain

The Impossible Contradictions of Mark Twain

Populist and patrician, hustler and moralist, salesman and satirist, he embodied the tensions within his America, and ours.
by Lauren Michele Jackson via The New Yorker on April 28, 2025
Jack Clayton, The Great Gatsby, 1974.

America the Beautiful

One hundred years ago, "The Great Gatsby" was first published. It remains one of the books that almost every literate American has read.
by John Pistelli via The Metropolitan Review on April 7, 2025

Zora Neale Hurston’s Rediscovered Novel

A new publication obscures the canonical writer.
by Tiana Reid via The Yale Review on March 11, 2025
1800s lithograph by George du Maurier showing a chair dance in an art studio.

Done in by Time

A review of Edwin Frank's short list of great 20th century novels.
by Joseph Epstein via Lamp Magazine on February 14, 2025
Three identical pictures of the explosion of an atomic bomb with different coloring.

How Literature Predicted and Portrayed the Atom Bomb

On Pierrepoint B. Noyes, H.G. Wells, and the “Superweapons” of early science-fiction.
by Dorian Lynskey via Literary Hub on January 28, 2025
Ronald and Nancy Reagan smiling and waving at victory celebration.

Honey, I Forgot to Duck

Reagan’s capacity to inhabit and generate legend stemmed from his own impulse to substitute pleasing fictions for inconvenient facts.
by Jackson Lears via London Review of Books on January 15, 2025
Zora Neale Hurston.

Why Zora Neale Hurston Was Obsessed with the Jews

Her long-unpublished novel was the culmination of a years-long fascination. What does it reveal about her fraught views on civil rights?
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on January 13, 2025
A cartoon of a group of effeminate men walking together.

Rise and Fall of the ‘Pansy Craze’

On Jazz Age gay culture and its backlash.
by Margaret Vandenburg via Gay And Lesbian Review on January 2, 2025

Why Is ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ So Misunderstood?

At 50, the game is more popular than ever, but its core appeal is still a great secret.
by Andrea Long Chu via Vulture on December 30, 2024
Spock and Kirk in a scene from Star Trek.

Star Trek’s Cold War

While America was fighting on the ground, the Federation was fighting in space.
by Tom Nichols via The Atlantic on December 26, 2024

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.
by Andrea Kaston Tange via The Conversation on December 11, 2024
Collage of Edna Ferber, a still from the film "Giant," and symbols of Texas.

The Carpetbagger Who Saw Texas’s Future

The notion of political realignment in the Lone Star State is older than you think. It goes back to Giant, an acidic novel by Edna Ferber.
by Chris Vognar via The Atlantic on December 9, 2024
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
Sketch of Mother and Infant, by J. Alden Weir, 1888.
partner

Keep Her Body from Pain and Her Mind from Worry

A reading list tracing the history of the birth control movement through novels.
by Stephanie Gorton via HNN on November 19, 2024
Collage of Matilda Gage and good and bad witches from "The Wizard of Oz" and "Wicked."

The Feminist Who Inspired the Witches of Oz

The story of suffragist Matilda Gage, the woman behind the curtain whose life story captivated her son-in-law L. Frank Baum as he wrote his classic novel.
by Evan I. Schwartz via Smithsonian Magazine on November 18, 2024
Title page of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Searching for the Elusive Man Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin

John Andrew Jackson spent a night at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s home as he fled north. Why do so few traces of his visit remain?
by Scott W. Stern via The New Republic on October 24, 2024
An old, crumbling Victorian house with figures from horror, including Toni Collette in Hereditary, a zombie, Edgar Allen Poe, and Stephen King.

American Horror Stories

It just might be the great American art form. You can thank the residents of Salem for that.
by Laura J. Miller via Slate on October 19, 2024
Photo by Ralph Ellison of men standing by a street in New York City.

Ralph Ellison’s Alchemical Camera

The novelist's aestheticizing impulse contrasts with the relentless seriousness of his observations and critiques of American society.
by Jed Perl via New York Review of Books on October 17, 2024
Sanora Babb

The Woman Who Would Be Steinbeck

John Steinbeck beat Sanora Babb to the great American Dust Bowl novel—using her field notes. What do we owe her today?
by Mark Athitakis via The Atlantic on October 10, 2024
National Book Award seal.

How Historical Fiction Redefined the Literary Canon

In contemporary publishing, novels fixated on the past rather than the present have garnered the most attention and prestige.
by Alexander Manshel via The Nation on September 11, 2024
partner

Books That Speak of Books

How a subgenre of murder mysteries plays with the way real history is written.
by Emma Garman via HNN on September 10, 2024
partner

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.
by Francis Spufford, Devin Thomas O’Shea via HNN on August 13, 2024
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.
by Alvin Chang via The Pudding on July 12, 2024
Cover of "James" by Percival Everett.

Kierkegaard on the Mississippi 

Percival Everett refashions a Mark Twain classic.
by Zain Khalid via Bookforum on July 2, 2024
A text adventure on an older computer.

From Infocom to 80 Days: An Oral History of Text Games and Interactive Fiction

MUDs, Usenet, and open source all play a part in 50 years of IF history.
by Anna Washenko via Ars Technica on June 20, 2024
Victorian telegraph operator.

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

No, really.
by Megan Ward via Slate on May 27, 2024
Spring Hill painting

The Pittsburgh School

Part of what defines Pittsburgh literature is the transcendent in the prosaic, the sacred in the profane. An intimation of beauty amid a kingdom of ugliness.
by Ed Simon via Belt Magazine on May 13, 2024
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.
by Nick Romeo via Aeon on May 3, 2024
Séance with spirit manifestation, 1872, by John Beattie.

Immortalizing Words

Henry James, spiritualism, and the afterlife.
by Ashley C. Barnes via The Hedgehog Review on April 30, 2024
partner

Tunnel Vision

When you dig beyond all purpose, digging becomes the purpose.
by Daniel Lavery via HNN on March 26, 2024
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