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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
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
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
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
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
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
Chapters and Verse
Looking for the poet between the lines.
by
Jay Parini
via
The American Scholar
on
March 3, 2025
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
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Her long-unpublished novel was the culmination of a years-long fascination.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: The Original Substacker
Publishing needs his democratic spirit.
by
Sam Kahn
via
UnHerd
on
December 13, 2024
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
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
“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
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
A Bullshit Genius
On Walter Isaacson’s biographical project.
by
Oscar Schwartz
via
The Drift
on
March 12, 2024
Page Against the Machine
Dan Sinykin’s history of corporate fiction.
by
Mitch Therieau
via
Bookforum
on
February 6, 2024
The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative
Tom Wolfe was no radical.
by
Osita Nwanevu
via
The New Republic
on
January 5, 2024
partner
Book Bans Aren't the Only Threat to Literature in Classrooms
Literature is key to a healthy democracy, but schools are leaving books behind.
by
Jonna Perrillo
,
Andrew Newman
via
Made By History
on
October 6, 2023
Liberalism in Mourning
Lionel Trilling crystallizes the cynical Cold War liberalism that sacrificed idealism for self-restraint.
by
Samuel Moyn
via
Boston Review
on
August 30, 2023
How An Untested, Cash-Strapped TV Show About Books Became An American Classic
Despite facing political headwinds and raising 'suspicion' among publishers, 'Reading Rainbow' introduced generations of American kids to books.
by
Jonathan Taylor
via
Los Angeles Times
on
July 11, 2023
We’re Distracted. That’s Nothing New.
Ever since Thoreau headed to Walden, our attention has been wandering.
by
Caleb Smith
via
The Chronicle of Higher Education
on
March 10, 2023
The Making of Norman Mailer
The young man went to war and became a novelist. But did he ever really come back?
by
David Denby
via
The New Yorker
on
December 19, 2022
The Spectacular Life of Octavia E. Butler
The story of the girl who grew up in Pasadena, took the bus, loved her mom and grandmother, and wrote herself into the world.
by
E. Alex Jung
via
Vulture
on
November 21, 2022
Fifty Years Ago, He Was America’s Most Famous Writer. Why Haven’t You Ever Heard of Him?
He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Then he disappeared.
by
Dan Kois
via
Slate
on
October 10, 2022
The Wondrous and Mundane Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Her private writing offers another, more idiosyncratic angle to understand the famed poet.
by
Apoorva Tadepalli
via
The Nation
on
August 3, 2022
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