Shake It Up: Jonathan Lethem and Kevin Dettmar on the music writers who taught the world how to hear

Down the Nightmare Alley: A noirish dance of shadow and light

Louisa May Alcott, “My Girls”

Unforgettable lonely boy James Dean carries East of Eden on his narrow shoulders

Edward Lucas White, “Lukundoo”

With It’s All One Case, a designer and collector has Ross Macdonald covered

Indignation: Roth, repression, and rebellion in the early Fifties

When it’s okay to stray from the source: No Way Out resets The Big Clock

Stephen Crane, “Four Men in a Cave”

Julie Buntin: Liberated by Lorrie Moore’s Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

A. Scott Berg: World War I and the end of American isolationism

William T. Hornaday, “The Bird Tragedy of Laysan Island”

Henry James, “Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie”

Watch: Alec Baldwin reads Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America

Library of America announces World War I and America grants for 65 organizations in 36 states

Ellen N. La Motte, “Alone”