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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.
by Eric Bennett via The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 10, 2014
Gen. Lew Wallace, circa 1861.

The Incredible Life of Lew Wallace, Civil War General and Author of Ben-Hur

The incredible story of how a disgraced Civil War general became one of the best-selling novelists in American history.
by John Swansburg via Slate on March 26, 2013
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.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via The New Yorker on June 6, 2011
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.
by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina via The Public Domain Review on March 8, 2011
Science fiction landscape.

75 Years Ago, "The Martian Chronicles" Legitimized Science Fiction

On Ray Bradbury’s underappreciated classic.
by Sam Weller via Literary Hub on April 28, 2025
Chinese migrants wrapped in blankets on a beach, from the cover of "Camp of the Saints."
partner

Mutant Capitalism

How the dystopian visions of the nativist right are in keeping with a long tradition of neoliberal ideology.
by Quinn Slobodian via HNN on April 15, 2025
William and Henry James.

William and Henry James

Examining the tumultuous bond between the two brothers.
by Peter Brooks via The Paris Review on April 1, 2025
A portrait of Edgar Allen Poe.

The Most Overrated Writer in America

Do people really like Edgar Allen Poe?
by Naomi Kanakia via Woman of Letters on March 18, 2025
Painting by Earle Richardson titled "Employment of Negroes in Agriculture," 1934.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is the Great American Novel

Most countries take their popular novelists more seriously than America has. The term “Great American Novel” was literally invented to describe this book
by Naomi Kanakia via Woman of Letters on March 11, 2025
Three covers of the New Yorker, with The New Yorker's logo, a highbrow man in a tophat and monocle, super-imposed over them.

The New Yorker and the American Voice

Tales of the city and beyond.
by Ed Simon via The Hedgehog Review on February 19, 2025
Von Trapp family from "The Sound of Music," (1965).

How the Family From Everyone’s Favorite Musical Actually Came to America

And why so many people remember the tale so differently.
by Rebecca Brenner Graham via Slate on January 26, 2025
Chinese workers standing in the streets.

The Long Shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act

The true cost of the immigration policy can be measured in the generations of Chinese Americans who were never born.
by Jane C. Hu via The New Yorker on January 23, 2025
Leonardo Dicaprio in "Titanic."

Which Celebrities Popularized (or Tarnished) Baby Names? A Statistical Analysis

Which public figures impacted baby naming trends?
by Daniel Parris via Stat Significant on January 8, 2025
Depictions of possible causes of apocalypse through war, disaster, and climate change.

Apocalypse, Constantly

Humans love to imagine their own demise.
by Adam Kirsch via The Atlantic on December 31, 2024
The cover of "Martian Time-Slip," featuring a man tending to a farm on Mars.

“Multiple Worlds Vying to Exist”: Philip K. Dick and Palestine

A critique of colonialism from Martian science fiction.
by Jonathan Lethem via The Paris Review on November 14, 2024
Cover of American Scary by Jeremy Dauber.

The Historical Seeds of Horror in "American Scary"

Jeremy Dauber's new book explores the themes and origins of the American horror genre.
by Gianni Washington via Chicago Review of Books on October 7, 2024
Advertisement promoting cocaine toothache drops, 1889.

An Undulating Thrill

Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?
by Douglas Small via Aeon on October 4, 2024
Doodles, flourishes and scribbles drawn by George Washington.

Doodle Nation: Notes on Distracted Drawing

Humans have doodled for as long as they have written and drawn, but psychoanalysis began to imagine the doodle as a key to understanding the unconscious mind.
by Polly Dickson via The Paris Review on July 17, 2024
Edward Allan Poe.

In Search of the Rarest Book in American Literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane

If ever a book ought not to be judged by its cover, Edgar Allan Poe’s debut collection, "Tamerlane and Other Poems," is that book.
by Bradford Morrow via Literary Hub on June 25, 2024
Jack Conroy

Jack Conroy and the Lost Era of Proletarian Literature

In the midst of the Depression, Conroy helped encourage a new generation of working-class writers.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via The Nation on April 30, 2024
partner

No Place to Make a Vote of Thanks

On the long tradition of Black third-party activism.
by Marc Blanc via HNN on April 23, 2024
Illustration of a literary rejection letter.

There Is No Point in My Being Other Than Honest with You: On Toni Morrison’s Rejection Letters

Autopsies of a changing publishing industry; frustrations with readers' tastes; and sympathies for poets and authors drawn to commercially hopeless genres.
by Melina Moe via Los Angeles Review of Books on March 26, 2024
A photograph of the SS Eastland.

Checking out Historical Chicago: Cynthia Pelayo's "Forgotten Sisters"

The SS Eastland disaster and Chicago's ghosts.
by Elizabeth McNeill via Chicago Review of Books on March 20, 2024

Past Tense

The historical novel isn’t cool. Popular? Yes. Enduring? Yes. A bit, well — for nerds? Also yes. Coolness lies in being at the right place at the right time.
by David Schurman Wallace via The Drift on March 12, 2024
A crowd at an American Nazi Party rally raising their hands for the Nazi salute.

What Is the History of Fascism in the United States?

Bruce Kuklick traces the meaning of the term “fascist” from its origins to the present day and how it has, over the years, gradually lost its coherence.
by Richard J. Evans via The Nation on January 17, 2024
The cover of "The Deadline" by Jill Lepore.

The Hold of the Dead Over the Living

A conversation with Jill Lepore about the past decade — “a time that felt like a time, felt like history.”
by Jill Lepore, Julien Crockett via Los Angeles Review of Books on January 2, 2024
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
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
A collage of images of Henry Ford and newspaper articles about him.

America’s Most Dangerous Anti-Jewish Propagandist

Making sense of anti-Semitism today requires examining Henry Ford’s outsize part in its origins.
by Daniel Schulman via The Atlantic on November 7, 2023
The covers of "Romance in Marseille" and "Amiable with Big Teeth" by Claude McCay over a blue blackground splattered with paint.

Zeal, Wit, and Fury: The Queer Black Modernism of Claude McKay

Considering the suppressed legacy of Claude McKay’s two “lost” novels, “Amiable with Big Teeth” and “Romance in Marseille.”
by Gary Edward Holcomb via Los Angeles Review of Books on September 11, 2023
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