The War Before the War: Andrew Delbanco on fugitive slaves and the fragility of the American Republic

Listen: “The Republic of Verse” now open to all who will hear

Wai Chee Dimock: Reading American literature outside the box

Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd: Elemental conflict in a vivid tapestry of life at sea

Stephen Colbert’s two-minute Moby-Dick lesson is a real roller-coaster ride

E. L. Doctorow pays tribute to Herman Melville’s great “kitchen-sink sort of book”

Nathaniel Philbrick asks Why Read Moby-Dick? and many rise to the “cunning test”

Geoffrey O’Brien: The House of Walworth, American Gothic, and Gilded Age literature