Aaron J. Leonard’s new book draws from almost 10,000 pages of F.B.I. files on an array of folk artists. It aims to illustrate the considerable impact that the U.S. government’s campaign against Communism had on folk artists in the 1940s and early ’50s.
Peter Manseau, the curator of American religious history at the Smithsonian, offers his definitive description of Thomas Jefferson's eclectic efforts to remake the Bible in the Catholic Book Club's latest selection.