You have your Southern Gothic tales and your Westerns, the San Francisco beats and the New York poets — but what is the literary tradition of the Midwest? It’s a hazy question: People don’t think of ...

The strangely short history of a publishing niche. Ad Policy The smallest book in the world is on display at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 1961. (Photo by Keystone / Getty Images) As an English professor, ...

John Guillory’s “Cultural Capital,” published amid the 1990s canon wars, became a classic. In a follow-up, “Professing Criticism,” he takes on his field’s deep funk. By Jennifer Schuessler Thirty ...