What Joseph Ellis is Reading

The historian and author, most recently, of “The Quartet” keeps Plato, Kant, Hume, Locke and Nietzsche on his shelves. “Just looking over at them reminds me that once upon a time I was a very serious young man.”

What books are currently on your night stand?

I don’t read in bed, so my night stand is the corner of my desk, where I put books for late-night reading amidst three sleeping dogs and a prowling cat. It’s a pretty eclectic pile: George Kennan, “Sketches From a Life”; Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Sixth Extinction”; Ron Rosbottom, “When Paris Went Dark”; back issues of The New Yorker for cartoons I like to read before turning in; and Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince” for reading to my grandkids when they visit.

Who is your favorite novelist of all time?

It’s between Nathaniel Hawthorne and F. Scott Fitzgerald, though for different reasons. I think “The Scarlet Letter” is the great morality tale in American literature that defies all merely moralistic categories. With “Gatsby” it’s all about style. I try to reread it every summer for rhythm and flow. When I was younger I would have picked Hemingway, especially the Nick Adams stories during trout season, but he’s faded as I’ve aged. ...