Self-assessments as frank and all-encompassing as “…she knows herself to be a woman afraid of engagement, of exposure, of experience, of change, of strangers, of... Read More

Reading the stories in Greg Mulcahy’s collection of short fiction, "Carbine", is like driving slowly by a smoldering auto–truck accident on I-10 just east of New Orleans. It... Read More

“Within a year after the nation’s political center had moved to Washington.” begins History of the Smithsonian, “when roads were still little more than paths through the... Read More

Thoreau’s two-year experiment “to live deliberately” on Walden Pond consecrated that body of water as America’s most famous literary landmark. To observe the... Read More

Upon her death in 1905, Mary A. Livermore was hailed by the Boston Transcript as “America’s foremost woman.” It was a fitting epitaph. During the Civil War, Livermore... Read More

It wasn’t until the year 2000 that Alabama voters repealed, by a narrow margin, the section of their state constitution that banned “any marriage between a white person and... Read More

“From afar, from America, most people dismiss my legal problem in Hausaland as quaint or comical merely because it’s over a horse,” Miles writes. “But what if the... Read More

The injunction not to judge a book by its cover perhaps became a truism because the tendency to judge books by their covers—by their bindings, sizes, editions, illustrations,... Read More

Vietnam is not a pretty place to be, according to this talented writer, who emigrated to America at a young age after the fall of Saigon. She finds that the United States has... Read More

During a typical day, Campbell’s characters are killed by circus tigers, transform themselves into gorillas and excavate their amputated limbs from burial plots. Clearly, this... Read More

This volume of essays constitutes a formidable, eloquent and contentious new work of gay literary criticism. Woodhouse is not afraid to stir up conflict as he nominates—or... Read More