Take a ride on the Philip Roth Tour Bus and see the sights of Roth's Newark, New Jersey -- his hometown and setting of several of his books, like Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy’s Complaint and I Married a Communist.

CHICAGO POEMS, published by Carl Sandburg in 1916, is an ode to a city. It's a clear eyed and unapologetic love letter: where you tell your true-love you love them not in spite of their imperfections but because of them. Sandburg starts Chicago Poems with "Chicago." Read it here and see its opening stanza visualized in a series of poster art.

Portnoy’s Complaint: the book that made Philip Roth.

Philip Roth reads from his book, Portnoy’s Complaint. As Martha Saxton wrote in Literary Guild in 1974, it's the story of "a lust-ridden, mother addicted young Jewish bachelor."

American Masters explores the life and career of Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novelist Philip Roth, often referred to as the greatest living American writer.

The writing process of Philip Roth: “I invent a character as I go along,” he says. “You must find everything about this man. Who he is, where he’s from, what he’s done, what his family is.” Roth says, “There’s a journalistic side to writing novels,” in mixing real life with fiction. “You can’t invent off of nothing.”

Lane Cake comes up several times in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Miss Maudie Atkinson -- the Finches’ neighbor -- is known all over the fictitious town of Maycomb for her famous Lane Cakes. The secret to Miss Maudie’s recipe seems to be the bourbon, probably more than the 1 to 3 cups that Mrs. Lane suggests in her recipe. Just ask Scout Finch: “Miss Maudie Atkinson baked a Lane cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight.”

An interview with Philip Roth: Unmasked co-writer and co-director William Karel, a French film director and author known for his historical and political documentaries, including Dark Side of the Moon, Looking for Nicolas Sarkozy, The World According to Bush, 1929, Poison d'avril, La fille du juge.

See and hear author, activist and American Master James Baldwin meet with members of the local African-American community in San Francisco in the early 1960s. "Take This Hammer" shows a Baldwin intent on discovering what he called, “the real situation of Negroes in the city, as opposed to the image San Francisco would like to present.”