The children’s literature of Frances Hodgson Burnett: “values that we need and can relate to” today

“Humor at first sight” as James Thurber’s art is celebrated for his 125th birthday

Gary K. Wolfe: Why the 1950s were the golden age of the science fiction novel

Andrew Blauner: The humanity, humility, and humor of Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts

Harold Bloom’s The American Canon: “He is speaking directly to you about his passions”

Thomas Jefferson’s Education: Alan Taylor on the troubled origins of “Mr. Jefferson’s University”

Listen: Lauren Groff introduces the “wickedly smart” Nancy Hale

“A project of self-transformation”—Benjamin Moser on the life and work of Susan Sontag

LOA celebrates Herman Melville’s 200th birthday with his Complete Poems

David Rieff on how his mother, Susan Sontag, lived as “a citizen of the Republic of Letters”

Mary Berry: Extending Wendell Berry’s legacy is “the most hopeful work I can think of”

Stony the Road: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow

Tim Page: The blunt, bracing, witty, still-relevant “bomb thrower” Virgil Thomson

Virgil Thomson, the music critic who “managed to demystify an art that was often regarded as otherworldly”

Thomas Mallon on Booth Tarkington: “he sees things through to their bitter, true conclusion”

Wai Chee Dimock: Reading American literature outside the box