Why are we still so afraid of using the grumpy old period?

The Tighter Weave: On Editing and Not Editing

Why are we still so afraid of using the grumpy old period?

After Every Clue

The Last Intellectual

The Rise and Fall and Rise of American Publishing

The Manifold Mind of Saul Bellow

Virginia Faulkner: Writer, editor, and ghostwriter?

The Manifold Mind of Saul Bellow

William Golding's Island of Savagery

John Updike wrote it all down

A Tale of Two College Towns

Three Hapsburgs and a Reporter Walk into a Canadian Vault

Why Doesn't Anyone Trust the Media?

We Used to Read Things in This Country

Jack Kerouac, Malcolm Cowley, and the difficult birth of On the Road

Did Charles I Have to Die?

Ad-X2: When US Politicians Took on Science

How sober should a writer be?

Two Years After Cormac McCarthy's Death, Rare Access to His Personal Library

Slavery After Abolition: Revolt on the Amelia

John Ashbery's Analyst

Why did Joan Didion abandon her book about the Manson murders?

Stop AI-Shaming Our Precious, Kindly Em Dashes–Please

"Mocha Dick," the White Whale of the Pacific

Fitzgerald's Follies

'The Devil Wears Rothko' Review: Victimhood and Vanity

When Coke and Pepsi Fought for Soft Drink in Outer Space

A grand tour through the essays of Lewis H. Lapham

The battle for Britain’s first book of the month club

Shadow of a Doubt

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, a '70s artist who became a hero to 'garbage men'

The Epic of James Joyce

I am an audience, first and foremost

Twain Dreams

The Maid Who Restored Charles II

The Victorians, Creation, and the Dinosaur Problem

All That Is Solid Bursts into Flame: Capitalism and Fire in the 19th Century US

The Connoisseur of Desire

Gateway Books: The lessons of a defunct canon

Possibly a Serious Possibility

Mark Twain was the original American celebrity

The Centuries-Long Struggle to Make English Words Behave

Chariot and Saucer

Mary MacLane, the Wild Woman from Butte

"Poetry City": Iowa City, Iowa

'Bright Circle' and 'Margaret Fuller': The Rise of the Transcendental Woman

What America Can Learn from the Americas

The Heir Conditioner

The Columbian Orator taught nineteenth-century Americans how to speak

Henry James's American Journey

Jack London, Jack Johnson, and the Fight of the Century

Graydon Carter's Wild Ride Through the Golden Age of Magazines

Billy Possum Tried–and Failed–To Replace the Teddy Bear as America's Toy

Dante's Divine Autofiction

Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Baritsu

When Corporate Branding Goes Wrong

The QWERTY Keyboard Will Never Die. Where Did the 150-Year-Old Design Come From?

The Cocaine Files

The Gilded Age Never Ended

How Have Cults Shaped American History?

Stolen and Missing Moon Rocks

The Prudence and Principles of Martin Van Buren

Nellie Bly

Losing It on Live TV

Forgeries, Fakes, and Phantom Time

Book and Dagger: How scholars and librarians became spies during World War II

Potoooooooo

Bunkers in Albania

1972 – 1982: The Decade That Changed Fitness Forever

Turkish chef recreates 8,600-year-old Neolithic bread

The Tedious Heroism of David Ruggles

The Editor Who Drove Hemingway Away

Bad Moon Rising

Christmas Before Charles Dickens

Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel

The One Hundred Pages Strategy

True Crime: Allan Pinkerton's Thirty Years a Detective (1884)

Why Are There So Many Mattress Firm Stores? (2018)

Slouch: Posture panic in modern America

A Diver Found a Ring Lost 50 Years Ago Near Barbados

A Woman Who Defined the Great Depression

The Allure of Medieval Churches

Journalists and the "Origin Story" of Working from Home

The heartbreak behind Dorothy Parker's wit

Age Before Duty: What role does age play in determining the status of equals?

Scott Fitzgerald's Last Act

When the Nazis Seized Power, This Jewish Actor Took on the Role of His Life

Her Majesty’s Rat-Catcher (2013)

Why don't we use awnings anymore (2022)

The Larkin Soap Company

Sears Homes 1915-1920

Can the Nobel Prize Save Publishing from Itself?

The many traditions of non-governmental money (2018)

American Mythology

Weird Nonfiction