If you want to beef up your Fourth of July celebration and go beyond the basic fireworks, hotdogs, and white pants, you might want to consider reading up on some Independence Day-related literature.

Olga Ravn’s “Fourth poem from the second continuation,” from her new novel, “My Work,” evokes motherhood as negative capability — the capacity, as John Keats described it, to dwell in “uncertainties, ...

Abolitionist and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass gave his powerful “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” 172 years ago. The speech was a powerful illustration of the disparity between the ...