Bicentennials
Life and Letters
Herman Melville at Home
The novelist drew on far-flung voyages to create his masterpiece. But he could finish it only at his beloved Berkshire farm.
By Jill Lepore
The Art World
How to Celebrate Walt Whitman’s Two-Hundredth Birthday
Loaf at your ease, luxuriating in the poet’s unhurried, insinuated cadences.
By Peter Schjeldahl
Life and Letters
The Strange and Twisted Life of “Frankenstein”
After two hundred years, are we ready for the truth about Mary Shelley’s novel?
By Jill Lepore