Books & Literary Life

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

America’s Past, Opera's Future: 11 New Books from Harvard Authors

These newly released novels, histories, and memoirs grapple with identity in all its forms.

by Gabriella Gage

Paul Farmer on the West Africa Ebola Epidemic

The 2014 epidemic was rooted in centuries of exploitation and war, Paul Farmer argues.

by Jonathan Shaw

See Their Faces

Confronting “some of the most challenging images in the history of photography”

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

Publishing The Harvard Advocate Despite the Pandemic

The coronavirus delays—but can’t stop—the revered literary magazine.

by Kristina DeMichele

Ross Douthat’s conservative conservatism, a profile by Lydialyle Gibson

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s journey through American decadence and upheaval

by Lydialyle Gibson

Lorenzo Tañada

Brief life of a Philippine patriot: 1898-1992

by Christopher Capozzola

Photographer Mark Erickson’s street scenes of 1990s Vietnam

Photographer Mark Erickson on the Vietnam he never knew

by Dan Kelly

Dan Chiasson's Poetry and Criticism

Poet-critic Dan Chiasson and The Math Campers

by Lydialyle Gibson

Excerpt from Mirim Udel’s book “Honey on the Page”

Miriam Udel’s passion for children and Yiddish children’s literature

Review of Martin Puchner’s “The Language of Thieves”

A German American scholar is unsettled by an ancestor’s secret.

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words