Topic: Harriet Beecher Stowe

Give the holiday gift with the most staying power

Even the best Christmas gifts lose their luster within a few months. Books have a staying power few gifts can match. I have nothing left from Christmases long past except my childhood books, each still prized. This season, give books. They are our bulwarks against time, ignorance, and barbarity.

Reader recommendation: The Minister’s Wooing

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.

Norway attacks: Was Breivik a Christian terrorist?

Anders Behring Breivik's Norway attacks have instigated a discussion about a double standard in the way people react to 'Christian terrorists' vs. 'Muslim terrorists.'

The little woman behind a very big war

A Q&A with David S. Reynolds, the author of "Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America," about Harriet Beecher Stowe's influence on the Civil War.

20 of the smartest nonfiction titles for summer reading

Some of this summer's best books will introduce you to Machu Picchu, hippie physicists, Parisian walks, and a serial imposter. And that’s just the nonfiction.

Scout, Atticus & Boo

A 50th-anniversary celebration of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ – America’s ‘national novel.’

Reader recommendation: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.

8 (smart) books for the beach

From the Monitor's summer reading guide: beach reading for smart readers.

Classic book review: A Summer of Hummingbirds

At the close of the Civil War, a unique moment in US culture.

Kay Scarpetta comes to life

A Jury of Her Peers

Elaine Showalter’s absorbing tour of the American women writers’ pantheon.

Abraham Lincoln

Promised Land

Works that reflect America's aims and desires.

The Summer of Hummingbirds

Solzhenitsyn and piercing pens

The literary dissident rightly observed the power of the pen to 'defeat lies.'

A Summer of Hummingbirds

At the close of the Civil War, a unique moment in US culture

The hummingbird became the symbol of an era for 19th-century America.

Readers' picks

Readers write and tell us what they are reading.

Tales from America's past

A roundup review of four new fictional takes on the 18th and 19th centuries, from the French and Indian War to the trial of Henry Ward Beecher in 1872.