Robert McCloskey Sketches for “Make Way for Ducklings” Born in 1914 in Hamilton, Ohio, Robert McCloskey came to Boston to attend the now-defunct Vesper George Art School. He left to live in New York for a time and established a career as an author and illustrator in the late 1930s. Over the years, he became […]
In ‘Alphabet’ Mysteries, ‘S’ Is Really For Santa Barbara It’s good to catch up with one of my favorite mystery writers, Sue Grafton, creator of private investigator Kinsey Millhone (rhymes with brimstone): The next book will be “W” Is for Wasted. Grafton promises “z” will be for “zero” — and after she finishes that one,
Little Libertarians on the prairie Christine Woodside argues that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, journalist Rose Wilder Lane, edited her mother’s reminiscences into books that project a Libertarian point of view: A close examination of the Wilder family papers suggests that Wilder’s daughter did far more than transcribe her mother’s pioneer tales: She shaped them and
The Best Births In Literature In honor of the birth last week of Britain’s Royal Heir, The Atlantic compiled this list of the five best birth scenes in literature. Are there any others you’d add to this list? Literature’s Fight Club Katherine Hill, author of the recently published novel The Violet Hour, admits: I have
The top 10 classic spy novels From Joseph Conrad to John le Carré, intelligence historian Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones picks the fiction that best reveals the secrets of espionage “So my selection of novels reflects the interests of a historian, and draws on both domestic and foreign espionage. They are “classics” in being of some antiquity, and
This past week was particularly rich in literary-related stories. Here’s a selection chosen for its variety. Elizabeth Wein’s top 10 dynamic duos in fiction Some characters just have to exist in pairs: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Thing 1 and Thing 2. Elizabeth Wein’s excellent novel Code Name Verity
Zocalo Public Square Zocalo Public Square is a not-for-profit daily ideas exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism. The entire initiative is a project of the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and the New America Foundation, and its goal is to “explore connection, place, big ideas, and what it means to
A Pearl Buck Novel, New After 4 Decades Big recent literary news is the discovery of a final novel by Pearl S. Buck, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The manuscript was discovered in a storage unit in Texas. Buck’s son, Edgar S. Walsh, believes that Buck completed the manuscript
Scientific Explanations for Why Spoilers Are So Horrible Like Jennifer Richler, I have the most recent season of Downton Abbey tucked away on my DVR, though I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. But because of the internet and, especially Twitter, I already know what big plot turns I’ll find when I do sit
Amherst College: Emily Dickinson Collection To say Emily Dickinson has an association with Amherst College is a bit of an understatement. Her grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, was one of the founders of the college and her father, Edward Dickinson, was treasurer of the school for over 35 years. In 1956, Millicent Todd Bingham gave Amherst
