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

“One backward glance” — Daniel H. Weiss on Michael O’Donnell and the tragic era of Vietnam

Love unknown: Thomas Travisano on the life and worlds of Elizabeth Bishop

Nicholas Kristof shifts his focus to the crisis at home: “Attention does make a difference”

The children’s literature of Frances Hodgson Burnett: “values that we need and can relate to” today

David L. Ulin on the early Joan Didion: Dread, disruption, and “a writer responding to her moment”

“Humor at first sight” as James Thurber’s art is celebrated for his 125th birthday

Gary K. Wolfe: Reinvention and revolution in 1960s science fiction

Andrew Blauner: The humanity, humility, and humor of Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts

Harold Bloom’s The American Canon: “He is speaking directly to you about his passions”

Thomas Jefferson’s Education: Alan Taylor on the troubled origins of “Mr. Jefferson’s University”