David L. Ulin on the early Joan Didion: Dread, disruption, and “a writer responding to her moment”

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

Gary K. Wolfe: Reinvention and revolution in 1960s science fiction

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

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

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

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

John Logan on James Fenimore Cooper: “Dive in and get reading”

The Forties we thought we knew: Facing the Abyss with George Hutchinson

“She was a writer, and her subject was movies”—new documentary celebrates Pauline Kael ahead of her 100th birthday

Rick Atkinson on Cornelius Ryan’s “vivid, visceral, riveting” histories of World War II

Walt Whitman speaks!—embraces multitudes, and becomes our contemporary