Books Essay

Patience, Practice, Perseverance

How Octavia E. Butler became a writer

by Lynell George | Thursday, September 14, 2023

Will the Real Vergil Please Stand Up?

Making sense of the life of a poet about whom we know so little

by Sarah Ruden | Thursday, August 17, 2023

The Friend Zone

Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas on what makes a marriage tick were downright radical for their time

by Robert Zaretsky | Sunday, February 19, 2023

Declassified

How genre-bending tales of espionage emerged from a childhood of pain, anger, and deception

by James Gibney | Thursday, December 08, 2022

A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré · Edited by Tim Cornwell; Viking, 752 pp., $40

Freedom Tales

Long before the contentious school board fights of today, Lydia Maria Child tried to help America’s children understand their country’s racial transgressions

by Lydia Moland | Monday, September 19, 2022

Dissident Lit 

Vladimir Nabokov and the novel that nourished the souls of a generation of would-be revolutionaries

by Richard Roper | Thursday, September 01, 2022

She Was the Toast of the World

The dramas and diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay

by Sandra M. Gilbert | Wednesday, June 01, 2022

The Birth of the Egghead Paperback

How one very young man changed the course of publishing and intellectual life in America

by Mark LaFlaur | Saturday, May 07, 2022

At the Corner of Byron and Shelley

Poetry and philhellenism at the Greek bicentennial

by A. E. Stallings | Thursday, September 16, 2021

Remembering Brad

What a stroke of luck when some of your favorite books were written by one of your dearest friends

by David Gessner | Wednesday, June 02, 2021
Load more