Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
Steve Donoghue reviews pollster-guru Mark J. Penn’s Microtrends, a book that sheds light on the campaign mentality of our most powerful politicians. The weak of stomach must consider themselves duly warned.
Read MoreAlmost a century ago, the squabbles of one privileged family decimated all of Europe. Steve Donoghue investigates Catrine Clay’s impossibly comprehensive retelling in King, Kaiser, Tsar:
Read MoreShould the brain-cracking complexity of modern science be explained in pithy one-liners? Steve Donoghue says no, even as he yields to the charm of Ira Flatow’s Present at the Future.
Read MoreGun-and-net-toting naturalists seldom produce a better writer than William Beebe. In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue revisits the science writing of a more invasive age.
Read MoreSimon & Schuster is calling Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution a work of science. Steve Donoghue examines just how blasphemous a claim that is.
Read MoreJames Fenimore Cooper’s greatness as a novelist has been almost completely lost behind a single, hilarious skewering from Mark Twain. Steve Donoghue reviews a new biography that tries desperately to win back the poor man’s reputation.
Read MoreAh, that slave-trading John Hawkins, what a dreamy, dashing man! Steve Donoghue reviews Susan Ronald’s The Pirate Queen, an Elizabethan history a trifle more interested in romance than, um, what actually happened.
Read MoreAlan Weisman’s The World Without Us has an irresistible premise: whatwould happen on Earth if human beings suddenly disappeared? SteveDonoghue cheerfully follows Weisman’s lead.
Read MoreThe only trouble with Sean O’Casey’s brilliant plays is that they overshadowhis magnificent memoirs. In our monthly feature, Steve Donoghuetries to even the scales.
Read MoreWhat do we do with great novels by a writer who was also a Nazi? Steve Donoghue investigates the terrible conundrum of H.H. Kirst.
Read MoreAlan Axelrod’s Blooding at Great Meadows perpetuates a few too many myths about George Washington. Fortunately, we have Steve Donoghue to set the hagiographers straight.
Read MoreBulldog attorney Vincent Bugliosi investigated the JFK assassination and wrote the world's longest book about it. We re-read it for the sad anniversary of that day in Dallas.
Read MoreSteve Donoghue converses with the critics in his review of Hermione Lee’s page-turning but harrowingly huge biography of Edith Wharton
Read MoreSteve Donoghue reviews John Donne: The Reformed Soul, a new “cuss-and-codpiece” biography by the inconceivably youthful John Stubbs
Read MoreIn this monthly feature, Steve Donoghue spots a troubling pattern of left-handed praise in the reviews of Robert Fagles new translation of the Aeneid
Read MoreSteve Donoghue gently debunks the anthropocentric conceits of Pulitzer Prize-winner Douglas Hofstadter’s newest book, I Am a Strange Loop.
Read MoreIn this monthly feature, Steve Donoghue revisits the great life and writing of Gerald of Wales, a continuously frustrated candidate for the Archbishopric of Wales.
Read MoreSteve Donoghue assesses all of twentieth century literature. That’s correct: all of twentieth century literature. Don’t believe it…?
Read MoreIn this monthly feature, Steve Donoghue touts the overlooked sea novels of Nicholas Monsarrat.
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.