Giants in the Earth

I've recently come across two authors I read years ago but have neither heard discussed nor read about in the decades since. First came O.E. Roolvag's novel Giants in the Earth, presented in the subtitle of "A Norwegian American Journey." This essay from The American Conservative is presented as part memoir, part literary review, and with a substanatial section on Norwegian film. Second was Ernst Cassirer, most likely the least well known of the four famous philosophers discussed in Wolfram Eilenberger's Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy. I read Giants in the Earth as an 11th grader at Central High School in Philadelphia, and I read Ernst Cassirer as a first-year student in Wesleyan University's Freshman Integrated Program. I wonder if anyone anywhere is working through Roolvag and Cassirer as assigned reading right now.