The beloved Brooklyn poet Edward Field has died at age 102. In his poem “World War II,” featured on our Story of the Week site, he reflected on his combat experience, a “time I believed in being heroic, in saving the world, / even if, when opportunity knocked, / I instinctively chose survival.”

World War II

A free story every week, sponsored by Library of America

storyoftheweek.loa.org

"As [Helen] Vendler’s critical readings unfold, you often want to turn back to the poem, because she will always notice things you have missed," writes Colin Burrow in his @lrb.co.uk review of Inhabit the Poem, her final essay collection. "She was as good as it gets." www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Colin Burrow · Good Weird or Bad Weird: Uses of Criticism

Literary criticism is a supremely occasional skill, where you have to be bold enough to operate where there aren’t any...

lrb.co.uk

Today we celebrate the life of Gloria Steinem, trailblazing feminist, activist, and journalist, who died yesterday at 92. Her influential 1971 essay “Sisterhood” is included in the LOA edition Women’s Liberation! Feminist Writings that Inspired a Revolution & Still Can. www.loa.org/books/645-wo...

Our forthcoming flash fiction anthology is one of @latimes.com's 29 books to watch for this fall! “These diverse offerings from an equally diverse grouping of 100 all-stars of U.S. literature gives flash fiction the delicious heft it richly deserves.” www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

29 new books to keep on your radar this fall

Flash fiction, sweeping histories and bold memoirs — discover the highly anticipated fiction and nonfiction our book reviewers are dipping into this autumn.

latimes.com

We are heartbroken to learn of the death of Wendell Berry, peerless novelist, poet, farmer, and activist. “He has set in motion forces that will for decades to come flavor our sense of what should be, what can be, and what must be,” writes author Bill McKibben. Explore Berry’s legacy on loa.org.

Wendell Berry - Library of America

loa.org

Set centuries apart, the novels of John Williams—born 104 years ago this August—show a consummate literary craftsman dedicated to perfecting the art of fiction. “Stoner is something rarer than a great novel—it is a perfect novel,” wrote the critic Morris Dickstein. loa.org/books/662

Sixty-three years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Among the most impactful and enduring works of oratory in American history, it’s included in this LOA edition of indispensable speeches. loa.org/books/249

Jim Thompson is “the most detectably modernist, entertainingly ludicrous, and titillatingly depraved crime novelist of the twentieth century,” writes @commonwealmagazine.org. www.commonwealmagazine.org/close-bone

Close to the Bone

Jim Thompson, the most "titillatingly depraved crime novelist of the twentieth century," penned iconic psychopathic protagonists and redefined the genre of noir.

commonwealmagazine.org

“He sought the poet, the artist, the bard who could speak into existence the freest country on earth.” On @reason.com, a look at Walt Whitman's fiery and revelatory writings on American democracy, recently published by LOA.

Walt Whitman's American Vistas

A new collection of Whitman's writing is a fitting read for the United States' 250th birthday.

reason.com

To celebrate noir titan Jim Thompson’s 120th birthday this September, Oak Tree Books and Circle Cinema in Tulsa are hosting a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing and a panel discussion with Megan Abbott, biographer Robert Polito, and TV writer Lou Berney. www.circlecinema.org/movies-event...

A Hell of a Man: Jim Thompson at 120

circlecinema.org

“As Hemingway's seminal novel turns 100 years old this year, The Sun Also Rises is officially being given a massive overhaul in a brand-new centenarian anniversary edition release from Library of America.” @screenrant.bsky.social celebrates our new annotated edition of a Lost Generation masterpiece.

100 Years Later, An American Literary Masterpiece Gets A Complete Overhaul On October 13

A century after its release, this American literary masterpiece is getting a major revamp.

screenrant.com

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair kicked off 57 years ago this weekend. In a legendary performance, Jimi Hendrix transformed “The Star-Spangled Banner” into what music critic Greil Marcus called “the greatest and most unstable protest song there is: every time you hear it, it says something else.”

Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z - Library of America

“Pop writing, at its best, doesn’t know the difference between desire and theory, which is precisely the reason for its power and its persistence. Lethem and Dettmar’s expansive anthology renders this...

loa.org

"The robot agreed Cooper's sentences are long and his diction archaic." Rather than have an AI chatbot (mis)guide your reading of The Last of the Mohicans, get an expert's take in this interview with the editor of the LOA edition of the Leatherstocking Tales: www.loa.org/news-and-vie...

John Logan on James Fenimore Cooper: “Dive in and get reading” - Library of America

Tony Award–winning playwright John Logan is currently in the news for his latest project, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, now in previews on Broadway prior to its official opening on July 25. John Logan. (...

loa.org

Matt Pearce@mattdpearce.com · 4w ago

I’m learning that the people who gamified paragraphs are having trouble reading books. www.axios.com/2026/08/11/r...

Next week, Pulitzer-winning novelist Joshua Cohen leads an online class on the great Jewish American writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, covering three of his classic stories that bring the reader from Galician Poland to Manhattan’s East Side. Register on Eventbrite. www.eventbrite.com/e/reading-am...

Reading America: Acclaimed Authors on Great Writing That Resonates Today

An eight-part series of online classes with Annette Gordon-Reed, Joshua Cohen, Colm Tóibín, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and more

eventbrite.com

Weasel murder mysteries, tunnel sagas of the earthworm—these are but two examples of “therolinguistics,” the fictional field of study invented by @ursulakleguin.com and now drawing new researchers thanks to a recent exhibit in Los Angeles. Find out more about the show and its mind-expanding subject.

Weasel Murder Mysteries and Tunnel Sagas of the Earthworm: A New Exhibit Explores Ursula K. Le Guin’s Therolinguistics - Library of America

In the Library of Antarctica, the noble literature of the emperor penguin is preserved in icy splendor. Sound farfetched? Ursula K. Le Guin didn’t think so, and neither does a new project inspired by ...

loa.org

Richard Hofstadter, author of the groundbreaking 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (and other trenchant works on US history and culture), was born 110 years ago today. “American political life,” he wrote, “has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds.”

The Paranoid Style in American Politics: Revisiting Richard Hofstadter in the Time of Trump - Library of America

LOA Live: A conversation with Sean Wilentz, Eric Foner, Arlie Hochschild, and Ira Katznelson October 13, 2020 — In his Pulitzer Prize–winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963) and in The Pa...

loa.org

Wendell Berry, novelist, poet, farmer, turns 92 today. “Though he starts with the Neolithic Village we all come from,” writes Gary Snyder, “his vision of North American possibilities reaches into different soils, climates, and cultures and suggests a future path of wisdom and right work worldwide.”

Wendell Berry - Library of America

loa.org

Ray Bradbury’s story “There Will Come Soft Rains” takes place today, August 4, 2026, detailing the programmed routines of an automated house left standing after nuclear war obliterates Allendale, CA. www.loa.org/books/659-no...

And the award for best bookshelf goes to... this longtime LOA fan, whose stunning collection caught our eye. (It certainly gives those of us with home libraries on the, um, messier side something to aspire to!)

“In the days when aspiring writers still cherished life experience over MFAs, the towering [Jim] Thompson worked a variety of unglamorous jobs including hotel worker, plumber’s helper, truck driver, pipe-liner and harvest hand before becoming a professional author.” crimereads.com/kubrick-jim-...

Sinners, Saints and Screenplays: On Jim Thompson and Stanley Kubrick

Recently I’ve been watching my former Chelsea, NYC neighbor Ethan Hawke in the cool FX neo-noir series The Lowdown, which is streaming on Hulu. Though I won’t get into the plot of this sizzling sou…

crimereads.com

Democracy in America author Alexis de Tocqueville was born on this day in 1805. How did an aristocratic lawyer from France pen perhaps the most enduring work on American politics and civic life? An expert panel including @jbf1755.bsky.social explored the question during a recent LOA LIVE event.

Reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America Now - Library of America

LOA LIVE Wednesday, September 10—Two centuries on, Alexis de Tocqueville’s brilliant Democracy in America remains the most prescient account of the virtues, and potential dangers, of our politics and ...

loa.org

The Queen Anne home of @ursulakleguin.com in Portland, Oregon, has been added to the National Register of Historic Places! “Within its walls, she produced many of the novels that transformed science fiction and fantasy into vehicles for exploring gender, politics, identity and culture.”

Historic Portland home where Ursula K. Le Guin wrote her greatest works gains national recognition - The Portland Tribune

One of Portland’s most important literary landmarks has earned national recognition. The Queen Anne home where acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin lived and wrote for nearly six decades has […]

portlandtribune.com

We've started to gather the fascinating conversations Ted Widmer has been having about The Living Declaration, including talks with @jamellebouie.net, Brian Bergstein @bostonglobe.com, and @bobcrawfordbass.bsky.social. Check them out at livingdeclaration.org/media.

Despite the end of reading having been declared, a friend and I are reading @libraryofamerica.bsky.social 19th century American short story collection together. A story a week and then we email each other our reactions. In general the stories are wilder than we might have guessed. Having good time

Don’t miss next week’s master class with historian Nell Irvin Painter, staging a meeting of the minds between near contemporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson and Sojourner Truth. Register on Eventbrite and find out more about LOA’s Reading America series. www.eventbrite.com/e/reading-am...

Reading America: Acclaimed Authors on Great Writing That Resonates Today

An eight-part series of online classes with Annette Gordon-Reed, Joshua Cohen, Colm Tóibín, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and more

eventbrite.com

This September, author and scholar Michael Gorra leads an online class on America’s quintessential literary art form: the short story. Trace the genre’s development through eight of its greatest practitioners, from Edgar Allan Poe to Eudora Welty. Register now: www.eventbrite.com/e/the-americ...

The American Short Story

Acclaimed scholar and critic Michael Gorra leads an online course on the American short story, from Edgar Allan Poe to Eudora Welty

eventbrite.com

Born on this day in 1849, the poet Emma Lazarus is perhaps best known for her sonnet to the Statue of Liberty, “The New Colossus.” “From her beacon-hand / Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command / The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.” loa.org/writers/121-emma-lazarus/

Ernest Hemingway, born July 21, 1899, remade the sound and style of literary English with his debut novel, The Sun Also Rises, published a century ago. Discover this masterpiece in a new annotated edition, with hundreds of illustrations, photographs, and marginal notes. www.loa.org/books/the-an...

The Annotated Sun Also Rises - Library of America

Introduction by Adam Gopnik Arriving in early September. Reserve your copy today at the special prepublication price and it will be shipped to you as soon as books arrive in the warehouse—weeks befor...

loa.org

Historian Ted Widmer sat down with Christina Shutt of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library to discuss the Declaration of Independence, with readings from actors Maura Kidwell and Chiké Johnson. Watch the full program on YouTube, hosted by Chicago Public Library: www.youtube.com/live/TTjGrn9...

The Living Declaration

YouTube video by Chicago Public Library

youtube.com

Historian Ted Widmer teamed up with antiquarian bookseller William Reese Company to identify some remarkable historic documents and manuscripts tied to the Declaration of Independence. Browse images of these fascinating texts and read Widmer’s commentary: www.williamreesecompany.com/media/wysiwy...