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

Redefining Race as Ethnicity

The expansive literary scholarship of Werner Sollors

by Christoph Irmscher

Recent Books with Harvard Connections: November-December 2024

Books about the art and science of eating, on being Zen, helping youngsters grow up, and more

Henry Hobson Richardson: Architect of Harvard's Iconic Austin and Sever Halls

Invaluable architectural archive published at last

by John S. Rosenberg

Edwin Frank Explores the 20th-Century Novel in 'Stranger Than Fiction'

A book about books—and the protagonist is the twentieth-century novel itself.

by Lydialyle Gibson

Higher Education Reform and the SAT

Nicholas Lemann on revising standardized testing to address real educational needs

In 'Homeland,' n+1 writer Richard Beck excavates the War on Terror

How the War on Terror reshaped American life

by Nina Pasquini

The Friendship of Helen Vendler and Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney writes to Helen Vendler.

Learning the Trees of North America

A monumental new guide to North American species

by Jonathan Shaw

Fall Book Recommendations from Harvard Authors

Democratic organizing, “architectural grafting,” the Constitution, offshore wealth, and other new books

Harvard Author Behind Afrofuturist Trilogy “Blood and Bone”

The reality-based fantasies of novelist Tomi Adeyemi

by Lydialyle Gibson