Books & Literary Life
Literary criticism, author interviews, and book culture from within and beyond Harvard.
Making Money Funny
Matt Levine’s spunky Bloomberg column
by Max J. Krupnick
John McPhee's Listener
A Paris Review article describes how renowned author John McPhee reads his drafts to his friend Gordon Gund ’61.
Harvard Headlines: In Defense of Weeds, John Tate Wins Abel Prize, and Commencement Humor
Our news roundup includes articles on landscape architecture professor Peter del Tredici and mathematics professor John Tate, and Commencement humor from The Onion.
“Panic in the Year Zero”
A poem by D.A. Powell, from the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Literary Exercises. [audio]
“Panic” and “Friendship” at Phi Beta Kappa
Historian Natalie Zemon Davis speaks on "The Possibilities of Friendship." Also featuring poet D.A. Powell with a vivid new work. [video/audio]
Gutenberg 2.0
Harvard’s libraries deal with disruptive change.
by Jonathan Shaw
Skyscraper as Symbol
In Tall Building: Imagining the Skyscraper, Scott Johnson explores the semiotics of these urban giants.
by Jonathan Shaw
A Cautionary Tale
David Warsh reviews Robert J. Samuelson's The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath
by David Warsh
The Green-Pea Memo
Poking fun “at the academic-bureaucratic mentality of university life”
Off the Shelf
Recent books with Harvard connections
Chapter and Verse
Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words