Books Essay

Last Works

Every writer eventually faces the question: Is there anything left to say?

By Roger Grenier | Monday, September 8, 2014

The Autobiography of Biography

In which I tell how I was drawn again and again to the lives of African-American figures, and found in them the story of our times

By David Levering Lewis | Monday, June 9, 2014

Looking Back, Warily, But With Affection

Snow Falling on Cedars at 20

By David Guterson | Tuesday, March 11, 2014

The Novels Don’t Change, But We Do

Rereading those works that matter to us proves that books read us even as we read them

By Wendy Smith | Friday, December 6, 2013

Examined Lives

A mystery exists at the heart of all literary biography: How does the mush of experience get turned into glittering artifact?

By Phyllis Rose | Thursday, September 5, 2013

Hannah Arendt on Trial

The 1963 publication of her “Eichmann in Jerusalem” sparked a debate that still rages over its author’s motivations

By Daniel Maier-Katkin and Nathan Stoltzfus | Monday, June 10, 2013

Endless Rewriting

When a novice writer received a letter from Jacques Barzun, asking her to write a book, how could she have known what she was in for?

By Helen Hazen | Friday, March 1, 2013

Happily Ever After

The folk tales gathered by the Brothers Grimm not only enchant us; they record the hardships European families endured for centuries

By Wendy Smith | Friday, December 7, 2012

Prince of Poets

Mahmoud Darwish was the voice of the Palestinian people—chronicling not just the struggles and political injustices, but also the rhythms of daily life

By David J. Wasserstein | Tuesday, September 4, 2012

An Unquenchable Gaiety of Mind

On visits to Cambridge University late in life, Jorge Luis Borges offered revealing last thoughts about his reading and writing

By George Watson | Thursday, May 31, 2012

A Poet of the Soil

The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity

By Richard Tillinghast | Friday, September 27, 2024

The Letters of Seamus Heaneyselected and edited by Christopher Reid

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 8, 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