In this first full-length biography of “the mother of African-American literature,” Carretta (Equiano, the African) offers a thoroughly readable, fully scholarly life of Wheatley (c. 1761–1784).

New York: Harper & Brothers. 1924. 8vo. 2 vols. $10.00. THOSE who read the considerable portions of Mark Twain’s Autobiography published in the North American Review a number of years ago will look ...

Henry Adams was a very curious man — curious both in the sense that he wanted to learn all he could about how America operated and curious because he disliked his own time and, in some ways, his own ...

During his lifetime, John Updike was acclaimed as one of the greatest writers of his generation, the poet laureate of middle-class, small-town, Protestant America.

After Ellmann's biography, I wondered why anyone would attempt to top his scholarship; it was so sure and careful. Well, scholarship is always a series of attempts to do better, but Bowker has not ...

Pauline Kael was no fan of Stanley Kubrick’s movies. She deplored his “arctic spirit.” She compared “A Clockwork Orange” to the work of a Teutonic professor. In her review of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” ...

Stephen Sondheim’s death in 2021, at 91, was a gut punch to musical theater fans. Showered with honors and tributes, he had begun to seem eternal, a cultural constant. Even his gnarliest shows enjoyed ...