It was a measure not only of his robust good health but the vitality of his public commitments that Bruce Cole’s sudden death last week came as such a shock to so many people—and that they were shocked to discover that he was 79. He seemed so much younger. Bruce had become one of the key figures in…

Auden and Christianity

The American Classics

Hawthorne in Concord

Emerson

KENNETH LYNN ENJOYED a long and productive career as a scholar of American literary and intellectual life, first at Harvard, then in a quixotic attempt to turn Washington's Federal City College into a serious university, then at Johns Hopkins, and then in a very active retirement. He produced…

The name of John Dewey generally evokes hissing from conservative intellectuals. But there is at least one way in which even they ought to find his example admirable. Dewey was easily the most prominent American philosopher of his time, and over the course of an enormously long life -- from 1859 to…