The Intellectual and Other Wanderings of Walter Benjamin

"Flyover Country" Is an Insult to Midwesterners Like Me. So Is "Heartland" Sentimentality.

Was Nietzsche Right About Religion?

Inside Emily Dickinson's Revealing Lost Papers

The Failure of Kentucky Coach John Calipari's "Players First" Philosophy

Anne Rice Issues a Petition to Get People to Be Nicer in Amazon Reviews

Literary Fan Fiction: John Banville Does Raymond Chandler

Teddy Roosevelt, Not-So-Great Reformer

The Contemporary Novel of Ideas Finds its Footing

How a Pope Helped Mussolini Rise to Power

Lorrie Moore Is a Mash-up of Contemporary Fiction

Big Star's Alex Chilton Wrote the Script for Every Indie-Rock Recluse

Lorrie Moore Has a Politics Problem

Malcolm Cowley Was One of the Best Literary Tastemakers of the Twentieth Century. Why Were His Politics So Awful?

'The Poetry of Sex' Isn't Actually About Sex

Which Creates Better Writers: An MFA Program or New York City?

Conservative Critics Say My New Israel Book Is Anti-Semitic. They Must Not Have Read It Very Closely

Why Is Robert Gates Angry?

A Little Narcissism Is Good For You

Don't Call Henry David Thoreau a Hermit