Professional triumph and personal tragedy: When Ross Macdonald went Underground

Mark Twain and William Dean Howells: the friendship that transformed American literature

Novelist Thomas Mallon on why we need Mary McCarthy more than ever

John Dos Passos, “The Donkey Boy”

Geoffrey C. Ward on Reporting Vietnam: “An astonishingly polished first draft of history”

James Baldwin: Some degrees of separation

Peter Taylor, “Je Suis Perdu”

Laura Dassow Walls: “We have misread Thoreau, tragically”

Carmen Maria Machado: American classics that influenced Her Body and Other Parties

Ken Burns cites LOA’s Reporting Vietnam as “go-to source” for his new film

Caroline Fraser: Why the Little House books are enjoyed by both children and adult readers

James Thurber, “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox”

The long, hard-fought campaign that led to The Library of America’s founding

How a Library of America book is born

Edith Wharton, “In the North”

Thomas Mallon: Shut off cable news and read Eudora Welty instead