reading — Bunk History

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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

Black and white photo of Boston’s Old Corner bookstore (1900).

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

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

19th-century painting: "Talking it Over"

How Prairie Philosophy Democratised Thought in 19th-century America

How two amateur schools pulled a generation of thinkers from the workers and teachers of the 19th-century American Midwest.

by Joseph M. Keegin via Aeon on September 10, 2024

Mary Cassatt painting of a nurse reading to a little girl.

Reading About Reading

Read up on the history of books.

The original cover sketch of "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go," by Richard Scarry, with cartoon animals in vehicles.

On Richard Scarry and the Art of Children's Literature

Scarry’s guides to life both reflected and bolstered kids’ lived experience, and in some cases even provided the template for it.

by Chris Ware via The Yale Review on September 9, 2024

Storefront of Nazi-owned "Aryan Book Store" called "Silver Shirt Literature."

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

Bookstore

Are Bookstores Just a Waste of Space?

In the online era, brick-and-mortar book retailers have been forced to redefine themselves.

by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on August 19, 2024

James Baldwin

The Brilliance in James Baldwin’s Letters

The famous author, who would have been 100 years old today, was best known for his novels and essays. But correspondence was where his light shone brightest.

by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on August 2, 2024

James Baldwin

Racism, Jazz, and James Baldwin’s “Sonny Blues”

Baldwin wrote with the knowledge that change would be hard and slow to achieve.

by Tom Jencks via OUPblog on August 2, 2024

Herman Melville; illustration by Maya Chessman.

Siding with Ahab

Can we appreciate Herman Melville’s work without attributing to it schemes for the uplift of modern man?

by Christopher Benfey via New York Review of Books on July 25, 2024

Jason Epstein.

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

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

Samuel Roth, books he sold.

Remembering Samuel Roth, the Bookseller Who Defied America’s Obscenity Laws

Samuel Roth was the sort of bookseller whose wares came wrapped in brown paper.

by Ed Simon via Literary Hub on July 3, 2024

Samuel Pepys, by John Hayls, 1666.

Peeping on Pepys

For more than two decades, a community of committed internet users has been chewing over the famous Londoner’s diary.

by Caroline Wazer via HNN on June 11, 2024

Misery and Fortune of Women (1930).

The Lost Abortion Plot

Power and choice in the 1930s novel.

by Julia Cooke via The Point on June 11, 2024

The first Congress in prayer.

The Bible in Revolutionary America

While Enlightenment philosophy may have influenced the wealthy Revolutionary elites, it was the Biblical worldview that prompted widespread resistance.

by Guy Chet via Starting Points on June 3, 2024

Painting of man finding woman seated at table writing

A Kind of Historical Faith

On the history of literature masquerading as primary source.

by Emma Garman via HNN on May 21, 2024

Covers from Lippincott's and Harper's from the 1890s.

Advertising as Art: How Literary Magazines Pioneered a New Kind of Graphic Design

Allison Rudnick on the rise and fall of the 19th century "Literary Poster."

by Allison Rudnick via Literary Hub on April 3, 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

Skyscraper construction workers at lunch photo, but sitting atop a web search bar.

Social Media Is Not What Killed the Web

Better browsers made things worse.

by Ian Bogost via The Atlantic on March 25, 2024

Cover of "James" by Percival Everett

Gulp Fiction, or Into the Missouri-verse

On Percival Everett’s “James.”

by Matt Seybold via Cleveland Review of Books on March 25, 2024

Girls reading "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

Betty Smith Enchanted a Generation of Readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’

No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation.

by Rachel Gordan via The Conversation on February 27, 2024

Display of banned books or censored books at Books Inc independent bookstore.

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

A mother sits behind a sign reading, "I have a Bible, I don't need those dirty books."

The Great Textbook War

What should children learn in school? It's a question that's stirred debate for decades, and in 1974 it led to violent protests in West Virginia.

by Trey Kay, Deborah George, Stan Bumgardner via American Public Media on September 11, 2023

Charles Dickens as he appears when reading, Harper’s Weekly (December 7th, 1867).

A Christmas Carol In Nineteenth-Century America, 1844-1870

What were Americans' immediate responses to "A Christmas Carol," and how did Dickens' reading tours and eventual death reshape its meaning?

by Thomas Ruys Smith via Comparative American Studies on July 27, 2023

Book open to pages that look like a computer desktop with "A-Z" written in file folders.

Life Is Short. Indexes Are Necessary.

In 1941 an ambitious Philadelphia pediatrician, the wonderfully named Waldo Emerson Nelson, became the editor of America’s leading textbook of pediatrics.

by Fara Dabhoiwala via New York Review of Books on June 1, 2023

U.S. Supreme Court building, left, and Kurt Vonnegut, right.

The Largely Forgotten Book Ban Case That Went Up to the Supreme Court

Library book bans are fueling national fights and a new Florida lawsuit. But only one case has come before the Supreme Court: Island Trees v. Pico.

by Anthony Aycock via Retropolis on May 20, 2023

Marian Anderson singing at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939.

Reading, Race, and "Robert's Rules of Order"

The book was an especially formal response to the complications of white supremacy, segregated democracy, and civil war.

by Kent Puckett via Public Books on April 28, 2023

Drawing of Phillis Wheatley writing at a desk.

The Great American Poet Who Was Named After a Slave Ship

A new biography of Phillis Wheatley places her in her era and shows the ways she used poetry to criticize the existence of slavery.

by Tiya Miles via The Atlantic on April 22, 2023

A painting of a Victorian-style room with an ornate bookshelf and books sitting on a table.

A Degenerate Assemblage

How Charles Lamb and his collection of well-loved books inspired a generation of American collectors.

by Anthony Grafton via London Review of Books on April 13, 2023

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