Books & Literary Life

Literary criticism, author interviews, and book culture from within and beyond Harvard.

Open Book: A New Nuclear Age

Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy’s latest book looks at the rising danger of a new arms race.

Fugitive Pedagogy

Jarvis Givens rediscovers the underground history of black schooling.

by Lydialyle Gibson

Open Book

Michael Ignatieff on Abraham Lincoln on solace

Off the Shelf

Recent books with Harvard connections

Music and Language, Reconciled

Matthew Aucoin on opera

by Thomas Forrest Kelly

Looking for the Real Stan Lee

Biographer Abraham Riesman plumbs the dark mysteries of the Marvel auteur

by Dan Kelly

Reporting, with an M.B.A.

Charles Duhigg unpacks how individuals and organizations work at war, on Wall Street, and in Silicon Valley

by Jonathan Shaw

The Poet of Old Age

Donald Hall, chronicler of life

by Adam Kirsch

Professor Steven Pinker on Thinking Straight

An excerpt from the preface of Pinker’s 2022 book Rationality

War, Misremembered

Elizabeth Samet, of West Point, reinterprets the American understanding of World War II.

Border Crossing

Author Rudy Ruiz carries on his Mexican-American family’s storytelling tradition.

by Nancy Walecki