• The Best 19th-Century American Novels - Hope Leslie: or, Early Times in the Massachusetts by Catharine Maria Sedgwick
  • The Best 19th-Century American Novels - Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
  • The Best 19th-Century American Novels - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs & Koritha Mitchell (editor)
  • The Best 19th-Century American Novels - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  • The Best 19th-Century American Novels - The Marrow of Tradition by Charles Chesnutt

The Best 19th-Century American Novels, recommended by Nathan Wolff

In the novels of the 19th century, the United States comes alive with all its contradictions and complications. Nathan Wolff, a professor of English at Tufts and author of Not Quite Hope and Other Political Emotions in the Gilded Ageintroduces us to his picks of the best 19th-century American novels, including two works of historical fiction and a memoir that influenced the novel form.

  • The Best Toni Morrison Books - The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  • The Best Toni Morrison Books - Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
  • The Best Toni Morrison Books - Beloved by Toni Morrison
  • The Best Toni Morrison Books - Home: A Novel by Toni Morrison
  • The Best Toni Morrison Books - The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison

The Best Toni Morrison Books, recommended by Marilyn Mobley

In 1993, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to American novelist Toni Morrison, “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” Here, literary scholar Marilyn Mobley—Professor Emerita of English and African American Studies at Case Western Reserve University and a former President of the Toni Morrison Society—introduces her work, from the best novel to start with to the essays she published just before her death in 2019.

  • The Best Philip Roth Books - Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
  • The Best Philip Roth Books - The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth
  • The Best Philip Roth Books - The Counterlife by Philip Roth
  • The Best Philip Roth Books - I Married a Communist by Philip Roth
  • The Best Philip Roth Books - The Human Stain by Philip Roth

The Best Philip Roth Books, recommended by Ira Nadel

Philip Roth was one of the great contemporary American novelists. He wrote about what he saw when he looked in the mirror, even when he didn’t like it, and claimed his only real interest was writing about what made him feel uncomfortable. Roth’s literary biographer, Ira Nadel, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, talks us through Philip Roth’s novels and explains why they’re worth reading.

  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Passing by Nella Larsen
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Cane by Jean Toomer
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - When Harlem Was in Vogue by David Levering Lewis
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman

The best books on The Harlem Renaissance, recommended by William J. Maxwell

It was a golden age for American culture, a flourishing of Black literature, music and the arts that exploded in the 1910s and lasted through to the Great Depression. It was focused on Harlem, the area of New York City above Central Park, but its origins and its impact were much, much broader. William J. Maxwell, Professor of English and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, recommends some of the best books on the Harlem Renaissance.

  • Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers - The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
  • Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers - The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965 by Dawn Powell
  • Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers - Queer Street by James McCourt
  • Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers - Instant Lives And More by Howard Moss, drawings by Edward Gorey
  • Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers - Cheap Novelties by Ben Katchor

Fran Lebowitz on New York Writers

‘The authors of these five books are people who came to New York for freedom – not so they could get rich, but so they could be free to pursue their interests and live their lives the way they wanted.’ New Yorker par excellence Fran Lebowitz recommends the writers who best capture her immutably mutable city.

  • The Best African American Literature - Cane by Jean Toomer
  • The Best African American Literature - Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  • The Best African American Literature - The Narrows by Ann Petry
  • The Best African American Literature - Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  • The Best African American Literature - Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Best African American Literature, recommended by Farah Jasmine Griffin

An ever-growing body of authors are writing about the reality of what it means to be black in America, says Farah Jasmine Griffin, director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. Here she recommends five works of African American literature, from greats like Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison to lesser-known gems by Ann Petry.

  • Sylvia Plath Books - The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  • Sylvia Plath Books - The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
  • Sylvia Plath Books - The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Vol 2: 1956–1963 by Peter Steinberg and Karen Kukil (eds.) & Sylvia Plath
  • Sylvia Plath Books - Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
  • Sylvia Plath Books - Ariel: The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath Books, recommended by Tim Kendall

Though biographical sensation has often diverted attention from her work, Sylvia Plath remains one of the finest lyric poets of the twentieth century, argues Professor Tim Kendall, Academic Director of Arts and Culture at Exeter and author of Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study. Here, he recommends the best places to start (or return to) with Plath, from a fresh look at Ariel to illuminating an oft-overlooked, brilliant appendix in her unabridged journals.

  • The Best Edgar Allan Poe Books - Poe: Poetry, Tales, and Selected Essays by Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Best Edgar Allan Poe Books - The Detective Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: Three Tales Featuring C. Auguste Dupin by Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Best Edgar Allan Poe Books - Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn
  • The Best Edgar Allan Poe Books - Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe by Daniel Hoffman
  • The Best Edgar Allan Poe Books - Pym: A Novel by Mat Johnson

The Best Edgar Allan Poe Books, recommended by Shawn Rosenheim

You can’t turn on a television or pass an airport bookstore without seeing the influence of America’s most generative writer, Edgar Allan Poe. He orginated true life crime and detective fiction, sci-fi and horror story tropes, and wrote unforgettable poems. Poe expert Shawn Rosenheim, a professor at Williams College, recommends where to start with Poe, as well as the best books about his influence.

  • The Best Cormac McCarthy Books - Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
  • The Best Cormac McCarthy Books - Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
  • The Best Cormac McCarthy Books - Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy's Tennessee Period by Dianne C. Luce
  • The Best Cormac McCarthy Books - All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
  • The Best Cormac McCarthy Books - The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Best Cormac McCarthy Books, recommended by Stacey Peebles

From All The Pretty Horses to Blood Meridian to The Road, American novelist Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) was a titan of literary fiction for his philosophical, violent, often deeply moving novels. Cormac McCarthy expert Stacey Peebles introduces us to the author’s oeuvre—and tells us that despite its apocalyptic bleakness, The Road is actually McCarthy’s “happiest book.”

  • The best books on Personality Types - Psychological Types by Carl Jung
  • The best books on Personality Types - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The best books on Personality Types - Murder Yet To Come by Isabel Briggs Myers
  • The best books on Personality Types - Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
  • The best books on Personality Types - The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman

The best books on Personality Types, recommended by Merve Emre

Since its birth in the early twentieth century, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has become the most popular personality test in the world. Here, Merve Emre, author of the new book The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing, recommends five books that reveal how the language of ‘type’ has seeped into the marrow of American civic institutions and social life—from Fortune 500 companies to Breakfast at Tiffany’s.