“She was a writer, and her subject was movies”—new documentary celebrates Pauline Kael ahead of her 100th birthday

Robert W. Trogdon on Ernest Hemingway’s Paris years, “a magical time for modern literature”

Ron Hansen on the Western, a “distinctly American mythology”

Ruth Franklin on the novels of Shirley Jackson: “She never did the same thing twice”

New life of John Steinbeck reveals a writer “fueled by anger”

Sean Wilentz: Richard Hofstadter and the “paranoid style” as an American phenomenon

The Saddest Words: Michael Gorra on reading Faulkner now

Susan Ware: Race, region, and the full story of the fight for women’s suffrage

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

Pete Hamill on A. J. Liebling: The Sweet Science and Other Writings

Monique Truong: Lafacadio Hearn’s wandering life as a search for home

Martin J. Sherwin: At his core, Jonathan Schell was a philosopher

American Conservatism: An “intellectual tradition worthy of respect and consideration”

Madison Smartt Bell on Robert Stone, restless chronicler of physical and moral extremity

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”