| American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation C Crain Yale University Press, 2001 | 242* | 2001 |
| Lovers of Human Flesh: Homosexuality and Cannibalism in Melville's Novels C Crain American literature 66 (1), 25-53, 1994 | 177 | 1994 |
| Twilight of the books (rev. of Maryanne Wolf's Proust and the Squid) C Crain The New Yorker, 2007 | 76 | 2007 |
| None of the Above (online title, The Case against Democracy; rev. of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy) C Crain The New Yorker 92, 36, 2016 | 31 | 2016 |
| Pleasure principles: Queer theorists and gay journalists wrestle over the politics of sex C Crain Lingua franca 7 (8), 26-37, 1997 | 31 | 1997 |
| Why We Don’t Read, Revisited. C Crain The New Yorker 14, 2018 | 29 | 2018 |
| Surveillance Society: The Mass-Observation movement and the meaning of everyday life C Crain The New Yorker, 76-82, 2006 | 27 | 2006 |
| The Bard’s fingerprints: Donald Foster Uses High-Powered Computer Tests to Search for Shakespeare’s Hidden Hand C Crain Lingua Franca 8 (5), 28-39, 1998 | 26* | 1998 |
| Frank O'Hara's "Fired" Self C Crain American Literary History 9 (2), 287-308, 1997 | 19 | 1997 |
| Approaching infinity (interview with David Foster Wallace for the Boston Globe) C Crain Conversations with David Foster Wallace, 121-126, 2003 | 18 | 2003 |
| Merchants of Doom (rev. of Robert Kuttner's "Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?") C Crain New Yorker, 2018 | 17* | 2018 |
| Infidelity: Milan Kundera Is on the Outs with His Translators, But Who’s Betraying Whom? C Crain Lingua Franca 9 (7), 38-50, 1999 | 15* | 1999 |
| The Artistic Animal: Is creativity in our genes? The self-made scholar Ellen Dissanayake thinks so. But it has taken her a lifetime of experience outside the academy to find … C Crain LINGUA FRANCA 11 (7), 28-37, 2001 | 13 | 2001 |
| Subcontinental Drift (rev. of Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies) C Crain The New York Times, 1999 | 13 | 1999 |
| There was Blood: The Ludlow Massacre Revisited (rev. of Thomas G. Andrews's Killing for Coal) C Crain The New Yorker, 76-81, 2009 | 8* | 2009 |
| Melville's Secrets C Crain Leviathan 14 (3), 6-24, 2012 | 6 | 2012 |
| The Great Postmodern Uncertainty That We Live In (outtakes of an interview with David Foster Wallace) C Crain Steamboats are Ruining Everything, 2008 | 6 | 2008 |
| Tocqueville for the Neocons C Crain The New York Times Book Review 14, 11, 2001 | 6 | 2001 |
| Did a germ make you gay C Crain Out Magazine 35, 46-49, 1999 | 6 | 1999 |
| Leander, Lorenzo, and Castalio: an early American romance C Crain Early American Literature 33 (1), 6-38, 1998 | 6* | 1998 |
