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Spooking the Censors
In the 1950s, the CIA funded efforts to smuggle great works of literature into the Eastern Bloc.
by
Michael O'Donnell
via
Los Angeles Review of Books
on
August 13, 2025
Words Left Behind: The Quandary of Posthumous Publishing
Joan Didion’s journal entries posthumously has sparked a wider ethical debate: Is it acceptable to publish a writer’s unfinished work after their death?
by
Selina Alipour Tabrizi
via
The Saturday Evening Post
on
August 4, 2025
partner
The 200 Year History of American Virtue Capitalism
Despite the recent backlash against DEI, there is a longstanding tradition of virtue capitalism in the United States.
by
Joseph P. Slaughter
via
Made By History
on
July 23, 2025
Mark Twain, the Californian
In 1864 San Francisco, Twain found hardship, Bohemia, and his voice—transforming from local reporter to rising literary force.
by
Ben Tarnoff
via
Lapham’s Quarterly
on
July 4, 2025
partner
Not Just the Dog-Eared Pages
Considering a novel as a whole, rather than as the sum of its parts, was an approach favored by mid-20th-century literary critics. It was also useful for fighting book bans.
by
Anthony Aycock
via
HNN
on
June 3, 2025
Twain Dreams
The enigma of Samuel Clemens.
by
John Jeremiah Sullivan
via
Harper’s
on
April 29, 2025
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
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
When the Battle's Lost and Won
Shulamith Firestone and the burdens of prophecy.
by
Audrey Wollen
via
Harper’s
on
March 28, 2025
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
The Gilded Age Never Ended
Plutocrats, anarchists, and what Henry James grasped about the romance of revolution.
by
Adam Gopnik
via
The New Yorker
on
February 24, 2025
The Many Guises of Robert Frost
Sometimes seen as the stuff of commencement addresses, his poems are hard to pin down—just like the man behind them.
by
Maggie Doherty
via
The New Yorker
on
February 24, 2025
Anvil, the Forgotten Magazine of Heartland Marxism
Anvil's popular vision for a multiracial socialism in the heart of the US could hardly be more urgent today.
by
Marc Blanc
via
Jacobin
on
February 23, 2025
The New Yorker and the American Voice
Tales of the city and beyond.
by
Ed Simon
via
The Hedgehog Review
on
February 19, 2025
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
Go Hard or Go Home
On folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, who passed away sixty-five years ago today.
by
Huda Hassan
via
Mother, Loosen My Tongue
on
January 28, 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
Refinding James Baldwin
A fascinating new exhibit focuses on Baldwin’s years in Turkey, the country that, in his words, saved his life.
by
Doreen St. Félix
via
The New Yorker
on
December 28, 2024
Walt Whitman: The Original Substacker
Publishing needs his democratic spirit.
by
Sam Kahn
via
UnHerd
on
December 13, 2024
partner
Self-Publishing and the Black American Narrative
"Published by the Author" explores the resourcefulness of Black writers of the nineteenth century.
by
Tim Brinkhof
,
Bryan Sinche
via
JSTOR Daily
on
December 11, 2024
The Puritans Were Book Banners, But They Weren’t Sexless Sourpusses
From early New England to the present day, censors have acted out of fear, not prudishness.
by
Peter C. Mancall
via
Zócalo Public Square
on
November 25, 2024
What the Novels of William Faulkner and Ralph Ellison Reveal About the Soul of America
The postwar moment of a distinctive new American novel—Nabokov’s "Lolita"— is also the moment in which William Faulkner finally gained recognition.
by
Edwin Frank
via
Literary Hub
on
November 19, 2024
A Radical Black Magazine From the Harlem Renaissance Was Ahead of Its Time
Fire!! was a pathbreaking showcase for Black artists and writers “ready to emotionally serve a new day and a new generation.”
by
Jon Key
via
Hammer & Hope
on
November 19, 2024
“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
How “The Great Gatsby” Changed the Landscape of New York City
On Robert Moses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the culture of environmental waste.
by
John Marsh
via
Monthly Review
on
November 13, 2024
Bookselling Out
“The Bookshop” tells the story of American bookstores in thirteen types. Its true subject is not how bookstore can survive, but how they should be.
by
Dan Sinykin
via
The Baffler
on
October 16, 2024
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
Anchoring Shards of Memory
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both composers mined the past to root themselves in an unstable present.
by
Joseph Horowitz
via
The American Scholar
on
September 9, 2024
Bigoted Bookselling: When the Nazis Opened a Propaganda Bookstore in Los Angeles
On Hitler’s attempt to win Americans over to his cause.
by
Evan Friss
via
Literary Hub
on
August 21, 2024
The Man Who Created the Trade Paperback
On the life and times of Jason Epstein, cofounder of “The New York Review of Books.”
by
Michael Castleman
via
Literary Hub
on
July 18, 2024
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