Ahoy, mates, all hands on deck for the Moby Dick Marathon! Bring sleeping bag and chowdah!

Mark Twain roamed the world, but came home to an astonishing house. “There ought to be a room in this house to swear in.”

Like the old folks who spoke it, Yiddish was dying out. Then Aaron Lanky rented a truck and. . . Mazel tov!

Laura Ingalls Wilder grew up in the “little house” but her daughter, Rose, became the story’s midwife.

First there was Webster, then Twain. But it took Mencken to celebrate how Americans really talk.

From “Who’s on First” to “A Hard Rain’s a’ Gonna Fall,” from “The Gettysburg Address” to “Green Eggs and Ham,” this delightful anthology lets you hear America talking.

Webster had his dictionary but it took an ugly war of words to win its place in American life.

Books were no bargain until a century ago when the Little Blue Books were born. A half billion books later. . .

It was another night in prime time, 1977, and then “Roots” broke the bonds of denial. (As seen in “Roots.”)

Her first book made her the “true heir” to Thoreau. But Annie Dillard found new wonders to explore.

For two years, America’s poet laureate reached out to the nation. The nation reached back.

“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking.” — Thoreau

When Will Durant asked the wise about “the meaning of life,” he got the usual answers. Then he asked a prisoner.

From a rooftop vision to a counterculture bible, Stewart Brand sowed the seeds of several revolutions.

No verse was too light, no rhyme was too impossible for Ogden Nash.