Ron Hansen on the Western, a “distinctly American mythology”
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
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”
(Re)introducing the “decidedly unsentimental and modern” Constance Fenimore Woolson
New “passion project” documentary Flannery reveals the writer who revealed mysteries
Kathryn Davis on the novels of Jean Stafford: “She never sentimentalized anything”
Shadow Archives: Scholar experiences “the thrill of literary detective work” in collections of Ellison, Petry, and others
