Forty years after its publication, Jon Sweeney revisits ‘Blue Highways’ and its iconoclastic author.

One of America's finest literary talents, Leonard Feeney, S.J., rose to national prominence in the 1940s—but not for his prose or poetry.

Leonard Feeney, writes Avery Dulles, S.J., in this 1978 encomium, should be remembered for more than his actions that led to his excommunication. He was a gifted orator, apologist, writer and counselor.

In “Camera Man,” the critic Dana Stevens uses the biography of the great silent film clown as a lens to explore the early days of movies, the cultural forces that gave them birth and the social upheavals they in turn engendered.

Sigrid Undset wrote the famous “Kristin Lavransdatter” trilogy and won the Nobel Prize. She also was a sometime contributor to America during the Second World War after the Nazi invasion of Norway had forced her into exile.

Sigrid Undset, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928, contributed numerous articles to America, including this 1942 essay on Catholic writers.