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Cover image from the first edition of Thoreau’s Walden
original

The Book Read ‘Round the World

Literary history is packed into Concord’s “Old Manse,” but the tiny abode of Walden’s author proves the highlight of our New England trip.
Cormac McCarthy.

Cormac McCarthy’s Unforgiving Parables of American Empire

He demonstrated how the frontier wasn’t an incubator of democratic equality but a place of unrelenting pain, cruelty, and suffering.
Painting of a young boy working as an apprentice, wearing an apron

How Long Did the School Year Last in Early America?

Even throwing off of a colonial power, representative institutions, Protestantism, and local autonomy in school decisions did not produce an egalitarian system.
Hayden White from the cover of "The Ethics of Narrative."

The Ironic Radical: On Hayden White’s “The Ethics of Narrative”

The kinds of narratives historians tend to fall back on constrain our ability to imagine alternatives to the way things have been, and to the way things are.
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.
Andrea Casali: The Personification of History Writing on the Back of Time, early 1760s

Ego-Histories

The more that historians make their own experiences an explicit part of their work, the harder it will become to let the sources speak clearly.
D-Day landing.

On the Enduring Power and Relevance of America’s Most Famous WWII Correspondent

The cover of The Black Mask magazine, June 1, 1923, featuring a hooded Klan member.
partner

The Gumshoes Who Took On the Klan

In the pages of "Black Mask" magazine, the Continental Op and Race Williams fought the KKK even as they shared its love of vigilante justice.
Colorful abstract art

The Writers’ Strike Opens Old Wounds

The deep roots of the latest WGA strike.
A colorful drawing of Lydia Maria Child sitting at a writing desk.

Who Was Lydia Maria Child?

A new biography examines the life and times of the pioneering activist, abolitionist, and writer.
Black and white photo of Sigmund Freud walking between a man in a suit and a woman in a dress and fur coat

President Wilson on the Couch

What happened when a diplomat teamed up with Sigmund Freud to analyse the president?
Prominent writers Billy Wilder and Gore Vidal (right and second from right) join a writers’ picket line at 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles, June 25, 1981. (Bettmann / Getty Images)

Hollywood Screenwriters Have Always Known That Moviemaking Is a Form of Labor

Stretching back to Hollywood’s Golden Age, writers and many others in the industry have fought for their rights as workers.
A photograph of Dennis Lehane next to the cover of his book, Small Mercies.

The Other South

Coming to terms with Boston’s racist legacy in “Small Mercies."
Winnifred Eaton

The First Asian American Screenwriter

The woman with the pen name Onoto Watanna had a stunningly productive literary career as a cookbook writer, novelist, and screenwriter.
A photograph of Josephine Herbst overlaid on a newspaper article she wrote titled "The Soviet in Cuba."

How Josephine Herbst, 'Leading Lady' of the Left, Chronicled the Rise of Fascism

During the interwar years, the American journalist reported on political unrest in Cuba, Germany and Spain.
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.
Painting of of C.L.R. James.

The Dialectician

The paradoxes of C.L.R. James.
Illustration by Cristina Spano, picturing rulers and colorful shapes and designs coming out of the neck of a collared shirt

The Origins of Creativity

The concept was devised in postwar America, in response to the cultural and commercial demands of the era. Now we’re stuck with it.
Albert Camus, photographed by Cecil Beaton for Vogue in 1946.

‘Travels in the Americas’ Review: Albert Camus Abroad

The author of ‘The Stranger’ toured the Americas in the years following World War II. He found prosperity and absurdity in plenty.
Illustration of McCormick at his desk, hunched over a typewriter.

Hellhounds on His Trail

Mack McCormick’s long, tortured quest to find the real Robert Johnson.
Production of Oklahoma! where actors in brightly colored clothing dance a square dance in front of a set of rural architecture and farmland.

Behind 'Oklahoma!' Lies the Remarkable Story of a Gay Cherokee Playwright

Lynn Riggs wrote the play that served as the basis of the hit 1943 musical.
Elsie Robinson

'Listen, World!': The Story of America's Most-Read Woman, Elsie Robinson

She risked everything to escape a life of poverty and become one of the nation's most read columnists, while advocating for the advancement of women.
original

Pieces of the Past

Dispatches from a spine-tingling day of visits to the places where James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, and Thomas Cole created their most famous works.
Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz."

The Feminist of Oz

Learn more about the story of Matilda Gage, whose writings inspired the witches in "The Wizard of Oz."
Abraham Lincoln in a photo circa 1847.

Abraham Lincoln’s Love Letters Captivated America. They Were a Hoax.

The Atlantic Monthly reported on newly found love letters between Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, his supposed sweetheart. Even biographers fell for the hoax.
Emblem an eye looking down on a winged globe above an ancient Egyptian landscape and the word "try".

The Emancipatory Visions of a Sex Magician: Paschal Beverly Randolph’s Occult Politics

How dreams of other worlds, above and below our own, reflect the unfulfilled promises of Emancipation.
A plantation worker harvests palm oil fruits in Riau, Indonesia.

The Story of Palm Oil Is a Story About Capitalism

Palm oil is in everything, but it is also enmeshed in global supply chains that rely on brutal working conditions and the destruction of the planet.
Black writers Askia Toure, Lorenzo Thomas, and Ismael Reed seated at an Umbra meeting.

A New Flame for Black Fire

What will be the legacy of the Black Arts Movement? Ishmael Reed reflects on the transformation and growth of Black arts since the 1960s.
Books from the 1990s.

What Literature Do We Study From the 1990s?

The turn-of-the-century literary canon, using data from college syllabi.
Protestors on the streets during the Algerian War.

The Counterinsurgent Imagination

A new book examines military manuals as a genre to understand what armed counter-revolutionaries think of as the right way to do what they do.

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