A beginner's guide to the books of John Steinbeck, one of America's great novelists.

Carol Steinbeck, John Steinbeck's first wife, played an integral role in producing 'The Grapes of Wrath.'

John Steinbeck's 'Sea of Cortez,' a travelogue through the Gulf of California, is still used by ecologists today.

A beginner's guide to Toni Morrison

The legendary American writer died in 2019, but her fiction is still as relevant as ever. This primer walks aspiring Morrison fans through her body of work, outlining the ideal starting point for several different kinds of readers. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Before he was a famous novelist, John Steinbeck wrote a werewolf murder mystery.

John Steinbeck spent 6 years studying at Stanford, but never earned a degree.

Watch writer John Steinbeck's Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

A guide to the best baseball books

If you're really all-in on the game, then you might want to dig into one of these classics, like Michael Lewis' "Moneyball," about the analytics that changed the sport, or Bob Uecker's autobiography, "Catcher in the Wry."

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Explore a list of the best novels of all time

A guide to the poetry of Walt Whitman

The resource allows you to explore over 100 of Whitman’s essential works, from the iconic “Leaves of Grass” through poems you’ll recognize from pop culture, like “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” and “O Captain! My Captain!”

A guide to the novels of Jane Austen

Austen wrote six novels, four that were published anonymously while she was alive ("Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park," "Emma") and two that were published posthumously, under her own name ("Northanger Abbey" and "Persuasion"). This guide, with annotations from Arizona State University professor Devoney Looser, breaks down each book's story and significance, making it an excellent primer for Jane-curious readers.

Gay Talese ran up expenses close to $5,000 to pursue ‘Frank Sinatra Has a Cold’

In this retrospective, Talese reflects on the making of the legendary article that pioneered a new literary style. He offers his critiques of the modern state of profiles, arguing the industry no longer produces compelling work.

A deep dive into Bob Dylan's 'memoir'

Bob Dylan's "Chronicles: Volume One" is part memoir and part novel, a book that intentionally blurs the line between Dylan's factual biography and the self-mythologizing he's done for over six decades in the public eye. This podcast walks listeners through the book, treating Dylan less like an artist and more like a thought leader.

A Guardian writer turned midlife chess slump into an obsession

Journalist Stephen Moss embarked on a chess self-improvement journey described in "The Guardian." Not a how-to, but a reflection on loss, drive, and whether mastering chess can mean mastering oneself.

A world-famous barista's primer on coffee appreciation

If you think you can tell good coffee from bad but don’t know how to put the distinction into words, world-famous barista Nicole Battefeld-Montgomery is here to help. Her instructions for breaking down a cup of coffee rivals any sommelier’s wine-tasting guide.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

A beginner's guide to online stock trading

For beginners, the first step to trading stocks online is finding a good broker.

O’Connor’s stories feature Southern outcasts thrust into bizarre situations

The Deep South is presented as a shadowy place, filled with scheming figures posing as upstanding citizens, like the conniving door-to-door Bible salesman of “Good Country People,” and smug intellectuals receiving their comeuppances, like the condescending college graduate of “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”

'Don Quixote' is often called the first 'modern novel' because of its aesthetics

Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” published in the early 17th century, isn’t the first long-form prose narrative. Still, many critics consider it the first “modern novel” because of its structure, approach to narration, and commentary on literature itself.

The first line of 'The Stranger' is one of literature's most famous openings

The novel's first sentence thrusts readers into the narrator Mersault's world, but its meaning can shift depending on the translation. A 1988 translation by Matthew Ward attempted to "Americanize" the text, removing some Britishisms and bringing it closer to what Camus intended in the original French manuscript. That included changing "Mother" to "Maman," a more familiar—and childlike—name. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Why Percival Everett decided to reimagine 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'

Percival Everett's novel "James"—a retelling of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Jim, an escaped slave—was one of the most acclaimed books of 2024. In this interview, Everett explains why he decided to rework the classic American novel and why he felt it was necessary to infuse his own with a different voice.

'Carrie' kick-started a wildly successful career

King has published more than 60 novels—along with dozens of novellas, hundreds of short stories, and several collections of nonfiction—and has sold over 400 million books. This 2024 interview finds him reflecting on his debut novel, and breakthrough hit, "Carrie," and the wild success that followed.

Finding the way home through flavor

In the fall of 1996, 9-year-old Alvin Chang rushed into his family's kitchen to find his grandmother making his absolute favorite dish: kimchi. This interactive story follows Chang's yearslong attempt to recreate the flavor from his childhood home.

The nonfiction book that kick-started Orwell's career

1935's "The Road to Wigan Pier" was a piece of investigative journalism that explored how the impoverished were handling the Great Depression, known in England as "the Slump." Orwell divided the book into two parts: One that described the living conditions of the working poor, and the other that criticized middle-class socialists' ineffectiveness at helping them.

Stanford’s ‘How to Start a Startup’ series

Stanford’s archive of lectures about creating a startup includes advice from Y Combinator notables such as former YC president and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and YC Cofounder Paul Graham.

The Beats also influenced the imagery of the 1960s

First editions of Burroughs’s "The Naked Lunch," Kerouac’s "The Dharma Bums," and Ferlinghetti’s "A Coney Island of the Mind" were just as notable for their text as they were for their design, which anticipated the psychedelic imagery of 1960s countercultural touchstones like Ken Kesey, Andy Warhol, and R. Crumb.

How Michelin-starred chefs cook steak

Earning a Michelin star is no easy feat; neither is cooking a steak. This tutorial, featuring three Michelin-starred chefs, shows how the pros tackle the subtle art, walking even the most kitchen-averse eaters through the best ways to cook a great cut.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.