Stephen Greenblatt

On the anthology shelves of any good bookstore, you can observe the silent shaping of history. "Letters of the Century." "The Best American Short Stories of the Century." "Black American Short Stories: A Century of the Best." "War With the Robots: 28 of the Best Short Stories by the Greatest Names in 20th Century Science Fiction." Whatever your passion or background, an anthologist has likely compiled it. Dog stories. Golf stories. War stories. Bicycles. Boats. Cars.

Since 1980, the annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have honored literary achievement. The Times presents the awards and sponsors the annual Festival of Books (launched in 1996) as part of a continuing commitment to celebrate the written word. Kenneth Turan, Times film critic and a former books editor for the paper, has directed the Book Prize program since 1995.

Words & Ideas Compiled by Grace Krilanovich. SUNDAY Group Signing : Editor Jeff Gelb and contributors to the anthology "Dark Passions XIII" (Debbie Smith, Cody Goodfellow, Lisa Morton and Roberta Lannes), horror poet Maria Alexander ("At Louche Ends: Poetry for the Decadent") and contributors to the anthology "Help Wanted: Tales of On-the-Job Terror" (Eric Shapiro, Amy Wallace, Scott Bradley, Will Huston and Zak Jarvis) will sign their new books. Dark Delicacies, 4213 W. Burbank Blvd., Burbank.

One Thanksgiving lesson most school kids probably don't receive has to do with the horn of plenty adorning festive paintings. For me it always seemed like a weird choice for carrying harvested food - what about a simple, flat-bottomed basket? But I didn't know that the horn was special. In classical myth, the horn is a symbol for several food- and wealth-related gods because, one story goes, Zeus played too roughly with a goat and broke its horn. To make amends, he promised to fill that broken horn with whatever food the animal desired.

One of the longest-running debates in literary history has been over the identity of a mysterious "Mr. W. H." to whom Shakespeare's sonnets were dedicated in 1609. Over the years, literally hundreds of books, articles and theses have been written by scholars speculating on who "W. H." was and what his relationship may have been to the Great Bard. Was he the man who procured the manuscript for Thomas Thorpe, a London stationer who was the publisher of the 1609 quarto edition?