Books & Literary Life

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

The Artist Edward Gorey—and Pets—at Harvard

Winter exhibits at Houghton Library   

by Nell Porter-Brown

Before the Cocktail Napkin

In this excerpt from her new book, Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Invention of Architecture, Cammy Brothers discusses how the artist demonstrated the possibility for architecture to be a vehicle for the imagination equal to painting or sculpture.

Off the Shelf

An editorial sampling of recent books with Harvard connections

"Working Sisters"

Pan Tianshu reviews Leslie Chang's new book Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

by Pan Tianshu

Chapter & Verse

A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words

Storytelling Scholar

Marie Rutkoski blends sixteenth-century history with fantasy in The Cabinet of Wonders, a new novel for young adults.

by Brittney Moraski

Day-After Thoughts: "Words Have Made a Comeback"

Reflections from Humanities Center scholar-in-residence Kiku Adatto on the roles of images and rhetoric in the 2008 campaign and its media coverage

Off the Shelf

Recent books with Harvard connections

Poetic Patriarch

Craig Lambert profiles the poet Richard Wilbur.

by Craig Lambert

Stinging the Dinosaurs

An excerpt from The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, by Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson

Carpenter Center's Craftsman

A new book, Le Corbusier Le Grand, pulls together the career of Le Corbusier, with material on Harvard’s Carpenter Center.

by John S. Rosenberg