Books & Literary Life


A New Chapter for Harvard Arts

The Office for the Arts turns 50, and its longtime director steps down.

by Lydialyle Gibson

Callimachus

Brief life of a multifaceted poet: c. 310 B.C.E. - c. 240 B.C.E.

by Stephanie Burt , Mark Payne

What’s Become of “Character”?

Marjorie Garber explores the word’s complexity and history.

Electoral Eccentricity

Problematic features of the Electoral College

Off the Shelf

Recent books with Harvard connections

The Arts as Essential Goods

A prescient novelist is hopeful that “after great change, amazing things can happen.”

by Nell Porter Brown

“From Neither Here Nor There”

Sociologist Roberto Gonzales on the predicament of undocumented young people

by Lydialyle Gibson

Life After Harvard: The Pains and Pleasures of Alumni Reunions

How Harvard reunions are cast in Ceridwen Dovey’s Life After Truth

by Nell Porter Brown

A Second Pulitzer for Colson Whitehead

The Nickel Boys wins the 2020 prize for fiction.

From Lewis and Clark to Michael Brown

Walter Johnson’s radical history of St. Louis

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Brief life of a breakthrough astronomer: 1900-1979

by Donovan Moore