“Remember the Ladies”: Edith Gelles on the incomparable letters of Abigail Adams

Against American exceptionalism: Gordon S. Wood on John Adams

Gordon S. Wood: How the American Revolution “infused into our culture our noblest ideals and highest aspirations”

Robert Polito: The one-of-a-kind “film investigations” of Manny Farber

Editor Joyce Carol Oates on the enduring spell of Shirley Jackson

Harold Holzer on The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now

Katherine Anne Porter’s “unflinching account of the human condition”

Sarah Weinman on Women Crime Writers: “They had their own stories to tell . . . in distinct, sometimes ruthless ways”

Robert Polito on the “melancholy and yearning” of David Goodis, who “always seems poised for rediscovery”

Arthur Miller at 100: a “loving embrace of humanity’s frailties”

Gregg Sutter on Elmore Leonard’s “dialogue-driven crime novels with an emphasis on character”

Dan Wakefield on Kurt Vonnegut: “If anything he was a counter-counter-culture hero”

Laurence Senelick on the plays of Arthur Miller’s middle phase, experimentalism in theater, and (of course) Marilyn Monroe

Darryl Pinckney: James Baldwin “stood his ground and paid a price”

New York exhibition showcases Lynd Ward as both pioneering graphic novelist and master illustrator

Lewis Dabney on Edmund Wilson, “a storyteller, a master of exposition and compressed intellectual analysis”