The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature

A finalist for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker

A delightful and majestic reckoning with the ascent of American fiction in the twentieth century through the prism of the under-known man who had an astonishing amount to do with it

Malcolm Cowley is not a household name today, but the American literary canon would look very different without him. A prototypical “man of letters” of his generation—Harvard University, a v...