New York’s borough of Brooklyn was a separate city in the 19th Century. Its population astounds — over 4 million people live within its crowded streets representing every nationality most of us have heard of and some which we have not, living in their own neighborhoods in which the native language may be spoken exclusively.

Among American novels, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” is one of those that until not many years ago every high-school student would read — perhaps had read in junior high — and would read again as a young adult to savor its protagonist Holden Caulfield’s wry put-downs of the “phoniness” of the adult world.

The writings of Robert M. Coates are unknown to the average reader these days. The last time I taught from a high school anthology of literature that contained one of his stories was in 1977 — a harrowing tale about a middle-aged married couple harassed by a gang of teenage thugs.

The writings of Robert M. Coates are unknown to the average reader these days. The last time I taught from a high school anthology of literature that contained one of his stories was in 1977 — a harrowing tale about a middle-aged married couple harassed by a gang of teenage thugs.

Like John Greenleaf Whittier before him, Robert Frost is often thought of as a bard of cozy evenings by a fire, an impression created by poems such as “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,”  “After Apple Picking,” “Mending Wall,” and “The Road Not Taken,” anthologized in middle- and high-school textbooks in this country for generation

One of the fascinating things about reading older science-fiction stories is discovering that their authors predicted often years or even decades in advance things that came to be: Jules Verne’s lunar travel vehicles, Czech writer Karel Capek’s robots, Arthur C. Clarke’s communication satellites.