Books & Literary Life

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

Collage of book covers featuring various titles on a vibrant orange background.

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

An illustration depicting the loss of mental functioning

Excerpt from “The Soul of Care” by Arthur Kleinman

A medical anthropologist cares for his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife.

Photograph of Dauphin Island, Alabama, after Hurricane Katrina, 2005, illustrating risks of coastal development as climate change progresses

Recent books with Harvard connections

Recent books with Harvard connections

Photograph of redeveloped Boston Government Center, 1971

Ann Forsyth reviews “Saving America’s Cities” by Lizabeth Cohen

In the history of urban renewal, a glimmer of the possibilities of social policy today

by Ann Forsyth

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Elizabeth Thomas shown on her couch at home with her own small dogs, Chapek and Kafka, and her son’s large dog, Clover, whom she watches when he is away.

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas profile

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s “laser beam” insights into the lives of animals and humans

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

Special Advertising Section: Harvard Authors' Bookshelf

Calling all Harvard Authors! Advertise your book in time for the holidays.

Ellen Newbold La Motte

Brief life of a bold activist: 1873-1961

by Cynthia Wachtell

Excerpt from Suzanne Preston Blier, “Picasso’s ‘Demoiselles’”

A Harvard scholar presents the “untold origins of a modern masterpiece.”

Recent books with Harvard connections

Recent books with Harvard connections

Edward S. Steinfeld reviews Ezra Vogel’s “China and Japan: Facing History”

The parallel, perilous, histories of China and Japan