Steve Donoghue
  • Welcome
  • Contact Me
Steve Donoghue
  • Welcome/
  • Contact Me/
Steve Donoghue

Steve's Posts from the Open Letters Monthly Archive

Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.

Steve Donoghue
  • Welcome/
  • Contact Me/
September 30, 2007

Cross-Dressing Septuagenarian Self-Medicating Skateboarders of Southeast Bergen County, Unite!

September 30, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

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 More
September 30, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Politics & History
history, October 2007, politics, Steve Donoghue
August 31, 2007

A Death in the Family

August 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Almost 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 More
August 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Politics & History
history, September 2007, Steve Donoghue
August 31, 2007

Just So Stories

August 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Should 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 More
August 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Literary Criticism
literary criticism, September 2007, Steve Donoghue
September 01, 2007

Absent Friends: Our Jolly Round Whirling Earth

September 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Gun-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 More
September 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Arts & Life
Absent Friends, September 2007, Steve Donoghue
August 01, 2007 August 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Simon & 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 More
August 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Current Events
August 2007, Steve Donoghue
July 31, 2007

Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Defenses

July 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

James 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 More
July 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction, History
August 2007, fiction, Steve Donoghue
July 31, 2007

No Mercy for Martin

July 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Ah, 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 More
July 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
History
August 2007, Steve Donoghue
July 01, 2007

Wishful Thinking

July 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Alan 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 More
July 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
July 2007, Steve Donoghue
June 30, 2007

Absent Friends: Himself

June 30, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

The 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 More
June 30, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Absent Friends, History
fiction, July 2007, Steve Donoghue
May 31, 2007

H.H. Kirst and the Problem of Evil

May 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

What 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 More
May 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction, Literary Criticism
Absent Friends, fiction, H- H- Kirst, June 2007, literary criticism, Steve Donoghue
June 01, 2007

Blooding at Great Meadows

June 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Alan 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 More
June 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Politics & History
history, June 2007, politics, Steve Donoghue
June 01, 2007

He Died

June 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Bulldog 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 More
June 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Politics & History
history, June 2007, Steve Donoghue
June 01, 2007

Edith Wharton

June 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Steve Donoghue converses with the critics in his review of Hermione Lee’s page-turning but harrowingly huge biography of Edith Wharton

Read More
June 01, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction, Literary Criticism
fiction, June 2007, literary criticism, Steve Donoghue
April 30, 2007

You Eatee?

April 30, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Steve Donoghue reviews John Donne: The Reformed Soul, a new “cuss-and-codpiece” biography by the inconceivably youthful John Stubbs

Read More
April 30, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Literary Criticism, Poetry
literary criticism, May 2007, Poetry, Steve Donoghue
April 30, 2007

Peer Review: Arms and the Pan

April 30, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

In 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 More
April 30, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Literary Criticism
literary criticism, May 2007, peer reviews, Steve Donoghue
March 31, 2007

A Tiny and Swattable Mind

March 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Steve Donoghue gently debunks the anthropocentric conceits of Pulitzer Prize-winner Douglas Hofstadter’s newest book, I Am a Strange Loop.

Read More
March 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Science and Technology
April 2007, Douglas R- Hofstadter, science, Steve Donoghue, technology
March 31, 2007

Absent Friends: It Wasn’t What He Wanted

March 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

In 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 More
March 31, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Arts & Life
Absent Friends, April 2007, Gerald of Wales, Steve Donoghue
February 28, 2007

Shall We in That Great Night Rejoice?

February 28, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

Steve Donoghue assesses all of twentieth century literature. That’s correct: all of twentieth century literature. Don’t believe it…?

Read More
February 28, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction, Literary Criticism
fiction, literary criticism, March 2007, Steve Donoghue
February 28, 2007

Absent Friends: Nicholas Monsarrat

February 28, 2007/ Steve Donoghue

In this monthly feature, Steve Donoghue touts the overlooked sea novels of Nicholas Monsarrat.

Read More
February 28, 2007/ Steve Donoghue/
Arts & Life
Absent Friends, March 2007, Nicholas Monsarrat, Steve Donoghue
  • Previous
  • Steve's Posts from the Open Letters Monthly Archive
  • Welcome/
  • Contact Me/

Steve Donoghue

This is a place for all of my writing about books.

Categories

  • A Year With The Windsors
  • Absent Friends
  • Ancient Rome
  • Arts & Life
  • Current Events
  • Education
  • Features
  • Fiction
  • History
  • Keeping Up w/ the Tudors
  • Literary Criticism
  • Poetry
  • Politics & History
  • Religion & Philosophy
  • Romance
  • Science Fiction
  • Science and Technology
  • Teen Fiction
  • The Windsors
  • Travel
  • Video
  • stevereads