To honor the optimism and the resilient spirit of John Steinbeck, who was born this week in 1902, we offer nine quotes from the classic American author for those in need of some inspiration. (READ MORE)
Hunter S. Thompson passed away this week in history, and we're honoring his fun, freak-filled legacy with a long opening excerpt from his first book, Hell's Angels. (READ MORE)
In the delightful collection of letters found in The Long Voyage, Malcolm Cowley proves himself to be filled with lighthearted literary anecdotes, exemplified by this excerpt in which Cowley talks about E.E. Cummings and proceeds to impersonate his style.(READ MORE)
As Americans gear up for the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, we pause to set aside the politics and focus on the games themselves. To help, we suggest reading The Boys of Winter by Wayne Coffey, about The Miracle on Ice back in 1980. (READ MORE)
To the woman who helped foster a literary generation, and advance her progressive values farther than most, we wish Gertrude Stein a happy 140th birthday with these nine quotes.(READ MORE)
Norman Mailer was many things: a man of letters, a fighter both figuratively and literally, a Pulitzer-prize winning author, and -- in this excerpt -- a political pundit, arguing why Ernest Hemingway should become president in the 1956 presidential elections.(READ MORE)
If our life callings were ever ordered, Seeger would have been born an activist first and a musician second. In the wake of his death, we exmaine his boundless empathy, his directional selflessness, and the music he used as a medium to channel to charged emotions of the working class.(READ MORE)
Rosa Parks has embodied the heart and the spirit of the Civil Rights movement, but her quiet defiance on a Montgomery bus was not accidental. Jeanne Theoharis's The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks proves the surprising extent of Rosa Parks's political activism. (READ MORE)
Before the bombing of Pearl Harbor morally assured America’s involvement in WWII, a battle brewed on our homefront. FDR and Charles Lindbergh were locked in a war of words over whether to take America into what would soon be called the "Second World War."(READ MORE)
Sonia Sotomayor's memoir My Beloved World (also available in Spanish as Mi Mundo Adorado) is brimming with unbridled drive, compassion and insight from the Supreme Court's first ever Hispanic justice.(READ MORE)
