Vain Offerings
/In The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs reduced learning to the memorization of trivia; now in The Year of Living Biblically he reduces religious faith to growing a beard. Steve Donoghue, in turn, reduces A.J. Jacobs.
Read MoreCross-Dressing Septuagenarian Self-Medicating Skateboarders of Southeast Bergen County, Unite!
/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 MoreAbsent Friends: I Could Wake Up in Nirvana and Laugh
/In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue celebrates the life and letters of John Jay Chapman, an eloquent American wit now forgotten, whose writings once provoked and delighted an enthusiastic public.
Read MoreA Death in the Family
/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 MoreJust So Stories
/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 MoreAbsent Friends: Our Jolly Round Whirling Earth
/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 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 MoreFenimore Cooper’s Literary Defenses
/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 MoreNo Mercy for Martin
/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 MoreWishful Thinking
/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 MoreAbsent Friends: Himself
/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 MoreH.H. Kirst and the Problem of Evil
/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 MoreBlooding at Great Meadows
/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 MoreEdith Wharton
/Steve Donoghue converses with the critics in his review of Hermione Lee’s page-turning but harrowingly huge biography of Edith Wharton
Read MoreYou Eatee?
/Steve Donoghue reviews John Donne: The Reformed Soul, a new “cuss-and-codpiece” biography by the inconceivably youthful John Stubbs
Read MorePeer Review: Arms and the Pan
/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 MoreA Tiny and Swattable Mind
/Steve Donoghue gently debunks the anthropocentric conceits of Pulitzer Prize-winner Douglas Hofstadter’s newest book, I Am a Strange Loop.
Read MoreAbsent Friends: It Wasn’t What He Wanted
/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 MoreShall We in That Great Night Rejoice?
/Steve Donoghue assesses all of twentieth century literature. That’s correct: all of twentieth century literature. Don’t believe it…?
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