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Portrait of Charles Dickens from his 1842 trip to America.

Charles Dickens Had Serious Beef with America and Its Bad Manners

How Charles Dickens' unpleasant trip to Boston led to "A Christmas Carol."
by Samantha Silva via Literary Hub on December 21, 2017
Caroline and Charles Ingalls

Little House, Small Government

How Laura Ingalls Wilder’s frontier vision of freedom and survival lives on in Trump’s America.
by Vivian Gornick via The New Republic on November 16, 2017

Zora Neale Hurston: “A Genius of the South”

John W. W. Zeiser reviews Peter Bagge's graphic biography "Fire!! The Zora Neale Hurston Story."
by John W. W. Zeiser via Los Angeles Review of Books on November 13, 2017
Lin Manuel Miranda and fellow actor dressed in colonial era clothing

How to Love Problematic Pop Culture

Revisiting the contradictions in "Hamilton" – and in the pushback to criticisms of the beloved musical.
by Lyra Monteiro via Medium on August 27, 2017

The True American

A review on the many publications about Henry David Thoreau's life for the bicentennial anniversary of his birthday.
by Robert Pogue Harrison via New York Review of Books on August 17, 2017

What Happens When Children's Books Fail to Confront the Complexity of Slavery

We need literature that wrestles with the evils of slavery while confronting its complexity – especially when it’s written for children
by Michael W. Twitty via The Guardian on January 19, 2016

Bad Air in William Delisle Hay’s 'The Doom of the Great City' (1880)

Deadly fogs, moralistic diatribes, debunked medical theory in what is considered to be the first modern tale of urban apocalypse.
by Brett Beasley via The Public Domain Review on September 30, 2015
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
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

Phillis Wheatley: an Eighteenth-Century Genius in Bondage

Vincent Carretta takes a look at the remarkable life of the first ever African-American woman to be published.
by Vincent Carretta via The Public Domain Review on December 2, 2006
James Baldwin

The Making and Unmaking of James Baldwin

On the private and public lives of the author of “The Fire Next Time” and “Giovanni’s Room.”
by Hilton Als via The New Yorker on February 9, 1998
Four cut out images of people.

How Viking Introduced John Steinbeck, James Joyce and More to American Readers

On Pascal Covici, the editor who nurtured some of the most iconic names in literature.
by Paul Slovak via Literary Hub on September 16, 2025
Engin Cezzar and James Baldwin in a dining room.

Bad Reviews

The FBI reads James Baldwin.
via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 15, 2025
James Baldwin by Joe Ciardiello.

James Baldwin’s Radical Politics of Love

The radical lives of James Baldwin.
by Elias Rodriques via The Nation on September 9, 2025
Anatomical diagram of a man's head with a landscape and shining sun where the brain would be.

What Does ‘Genius’ Really Mean?

Humans have long tried to understand a quicksilver quality that defies explanation.
by Helen Lewis via The Atlantic on August 14, 2025

What If It Is Happening Here?

Lessons from the anti-fascist novel in Trump’s second term.
by David Renton via Literary Hub on May 12, 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
Robert Frost.

Chapters and Verse

Looking for the poet between the lines.
by Jay Parini via The American Scholar on March 3, 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
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
Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman: The Original Substacker

Publishing needs his democratic spirit.
by Sam Kahn via UnHerd on December 13, 2024
A portrait of Ignatius Donnelly.

The Peculiar Case of Ignatius Donnelly

The politician presents a riddle for historians. He was a beloved populist but also a crackpot conspiracist. Were his politics tainted by his strange beliefs?
by Andrew Katzenstein via The Nation on December 12, 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

How Woodrow Wilson’s Privileged Southern Upbringing Influenced His Love Life

In Wilson’s chivalric framework, women were required to be submissive precisely so that men could protect the weaker sex.
by Christopher Cox via Literary Hub on November 8, 2024
A sketch of a woman praying outside.

“To Eat This Big Universe as Her Oyster”

Margaret Fuller and the first major work of American feminism.
by Randall Fuller via The Public Domain Review on October 29, 2024
Painting of Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copley.

Mercy Otis Warren, America’s First Female Historian

At the prodding of John and Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren took on a massive project: writing a comprehensive history of the Revolutionary War.
by Nancy Rubin Stuart via The Saturday Evening Post on March 18, 2024

The Great American Novels

136 books that made America think.
via The Atlantic on March 14, 2024
Elon Musk's face edited onto Apple advertisements.

A Bullshit Genius

On Walter Isaacson’s biographical project.
by Oscar Schwartz via The Drift on March 12, 2024
A hand-drawn, slightly abstract image of a pink typewriter, using a QWERTY keyboard.

Page Against the Machine

Dan Sinykin’s history of corporate fiction.
by Mitch Therieau via Bookforum on February 6, 2024
Tom Wolfe in profile against the New York City skyline.

The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative

Tom Wolfe was no radical.
by Osita Nwanevu via The New Republic on January 5, 2024
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