By: Mimi Lipson

STUDS TERKEL (1912–2008): shovel-ready and irony free. Fifty years from now, who will remind our grandchildren what a progressive looks like? And without another Federal Writer’s Project, who’ll collect oral histories from the survivors of […]

By: Peggy Nelson

L. FRANK BAUM (1856–1919) is best known for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and wrote 13 sequels. Which seems like a lot until you realize that the series was dwarfed by the number of other […]

By: Tor Aarestad

In The Master and Margarita MIKHAIL BULGAKOV (1891-1940) created a gang of villains so fantastical and vivid in their descriptions — stocky Azazello with his straw patch of flaming hair hanging down, solitary fang protruding […]

By: Joshua Glenn

“Once I was an alchemist named Alec, of Holland”

By: Joshua Glenn

By: Joshua Glenn

A hibrow (not highbrow) manifesto, of sorts

By: Joshua Glenn

This morning I read Tom Sharpe’s 1976 campus novel, Wilt, because an AbeBooks survey of British readers named it one of the 10 funniest books ever. I was convalescing, and therefore receptive to inspiration. There’s […]

By: Joshua Glenn

A hilobrow literary mystery…