Books & Literary Life

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

A woman with long, silver hair rests her chin on her hand, wearing a black top.

Author and Harvard Divinity School writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams finds beauty in the world around us.

by Salomé Gómez-Upegui

Photograph of the Lincoln Memorial

Open Book

Michael Ignatieff on Abraham Lincoln on solace

Woodblock print based on The Tale of Genji

Off the Shelf

Recent books with Harvard connections

Photograph from staging of Eurydice, opera by Matthew Aucoin

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

Illustration showing U.S. flag pulled different directions by an oligarch and ordinary citizens

A Democracy of Opportunity

Liberals must learn from conservatives how to interpret the Constitution in all its dimensions.

by Lincoln Caplan

Notes on Doctoring

Michael Stanley and the covenant of medicine

by Lydialyle Gibson

A man with a beard sits casually on a chair, relaxed on wooden steps.

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

Portrait of Donald Hall 2014

The Poet of Old Age

Donald Hall, chronicler of life

by Adam Kirsch

Photo of anti-vaccination protest, Los Angeles, October 12, 2021

Professor Steven Pinker on Thinking Straight

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

World War II domestic propaganda posters urge civilian compliance with rationing

War, Misremembered

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