Ruth Franklin on the novels of Shirley Jackson: “She never did the same thing twice”

New life of John Steinbeck reveals a writer “fueled by anger”

Sean Wilentz: Richard Hofstadter and the “paranoid style” as an American phenomenon

The Saddest Words: Michael Gorra on reading Faulkner now

Susan Ware: Race, region, and the full story of the fight for women’s suffrage

Love unknown: Thomas Travisano on the life and worlds of Elizabeth Bishop

Pete Hamill on A. J. Liebling: The Sweet Science and Other Writings

Monique Truong: Lafacadio Hearn’s wandering life as a search for home

Martin J. Sherwin: At his core, Jonathan Schell was a philosopher

American Conservatism: An “intellectual tradition worthy of respect and consideration”

Madison Smartt Bell on Robert Stone, restless chronicler of physical and moral extremity

Susan K. Harris: The round-the-world trip that made Mark Twain an anti-imperialist

For pleasure or as a spiritual discipline, bird-watching is “a lesson in respect and humility”

New “passion project” documentary Flannery reveals the writer who revealed mysteries

(Re)introducing the “decidedly unsentimental and modern” Constance Fenimore Woolson

Kathryn Davis on the novels of Jean Stafford: “She never sentimentalized anything”