“You’re not reading your grandfather’s short story”— Charles McGrath on the fiction of Donald Barthelme
“Engaging, embracing, confiding, and humane”—David Quammen on the work of E. O. Wilson
Endpapers: A family story about books, belonging, and the bloodlands of 20th-century Europe
The worlds of Octavia E. Butler: “There’s real danger in these stories”
Nicholas Lemann: Challenges to American democracy are “ever-present”
Robert W. Trogdon on Ernest Hemingway’s Paris years, “a magical time for modern literature”
Roads not taken: Andrew H. Miller discusses On Not Being Someone Else
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”
