“America’s Founding Son”: Author & Musician Bob Crawford on the Life of John Quincy Adams

“He Breathes, He Writes”: The Voluminous Memory and Deep Empathy of Ironweed Author William Kennedy

Handsome, Angry, & Funny as Hell: Geoff Wisner on George Templeton Strong, Civil War Diarist Extraordinaire

Dime Stores & Bus Stations: Robert Polito on the Savage Art of Jim Thompson

“A National Art Form”: John Stauffer on Rediscovering the 19th-Century American Short Story, from Poe to Wharton

Maps and Legends: The Spectacular Cartography of Ursula K. Le Guin

“War on the Kitchen Sink”: Michael Paller on the Larger-Than-Life Plays of John Guare

“Putting the Poem First”: Stephanie Burt on the Towering Literary Legacy of Helen Vendler

“She Put into Words Her Dreams”: A Revelatory New Biography of May Swenson, Far-Seeing Poet & LGBTQ Icon

“The Shock of Reality”: Thomas Wild on Hannah Arendt’s Towering Analysis of Totalitarianism

“His Own Sense of Higher Justice”: C. M. Kushins on the Freewheeling Career of Elmore Leonard

“The Odd, the Queer, the Strange, the Exotic, the Monstrous”: Christopher Benfey on Lafcadio Hearn

“Ancient and Modern Both”: Painter David Ligare Draws Inspiration from John Steinbeck and Robinson Jeffers

Dreaming in Didion: Alissa Wilkinson on Hollywood, Politics, and Joan Didion

“Dissent, Compromise, and Lead”: Historian David Waldstreicher on the Singular Public Life of John Quincy Adams

“Dreaming Up the Entire Universe”: Juan Felipe Herrera on the Craft and Cosmology of the Poem