New York, a place with no apparent history, he discovers Anne Frank hiding in his attic. Pouf goes his dream of minding his own garden, and leading a Candide-like existence. Instead he's landed with a steamer trunk full of historical baggage. Not to...

The voice is recognizable, she writes, by its “violent rush of words that announced the arrival of a narrating voice whose signature traits were a compulsive brilliance, an exuberant nastiness, and a take-no-prisoners humor edged in self-laceration.” ...

Would the works of the great Tim O'Brien pass the censorship test? One can only imagine the shock waves that a book by Philip Roth would trigger. What films could a cinema studies professor show in her or his class? Could Apocalypse Now, Moonstruck, or...

“Twitter like drugs for me,” Bissinger Tweeted recently. “One Tweet and then I need 75 more hits. Plus I get jealous at drycleaners if somebody has more shirts than me.” The feed of peak-era Philip Roth might have looked something like this. Though...

Could I nominate Intourist as the most hideous? For those too young to remember, I should explain that this was the state tourist agency that in the bad old days controlled all holiday visits to Russia and its satellite republics. In 1984 it...

But I’ll tell you what I do know: I know Anne Frank died in Auschwitz.” She corrects him — “It was Bergen-Belsen” — and then she “yank(s) up her shirtsleeve, revealing the fading blue-black concentration camp numbers tattooed on the inside of her pale...