Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
If a book of this unsettling oddness and power can be found, virtually at random, on the lists of one self-publish print-on-demand outfit, we might well lie awake wondering what else we're missing, out there in the sprawling infinitude of computers and ISBNs.
Read MoreIn his review of, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Steve Donoghue explains why this book might make you want to "punch" the author...
Read MoreJust as we approach the time when there will be no more living witnesses to the Second World War, Richard Evans concludes his monumental three-volume Nazi history with The Third Reich at War. Steve Donoghue makes record of the results.
Read MoreVirgil’s Aeneid has been attracting translators for centuries, and Sarah Ruden’s rendering is notable in more ways than one. (She calls him Vergil, for one thing, but that’s just the start.) Steve Donoghue regards her efforts in the latest “A Year with the Romans.”
Read MoreIn his review of a new biography of Philip II of Macedonia, Steve Donoghue encourages readers, "Those interested in ancient history – and yes, Alexander fans – are urged not to miss it."
Read MoreJohn Wray's Lowboy enters the New York subway system. Steve Donoghue follows it.
Read MoreIn 2006 Pluto was officially taken off the list of planets. Neil deGrasse Tyson relates the ex-planet's story.
Read MoreRonald Reagan was the only modern U.S. President to keep a daily journal. Steve Donoghue plumbs The Unabridged Reagan Diaries in search of the diarist’s soul.
Read MoreHe was a slave who wrote his way to freedom – unless he wasn’t, and unless he didn’t. Steve Donoghue’s “A Year with the Romans” looks at the great comic playwright Terence.
Read MoreThey were wealthy, influential, and for two centuries in England they wielded power to rival the king’s … but who were the Earls of Pembroke (and their equally formidable wives)? In Quarrel with the King, Adam Nicolson takes us beyond the pomp, and here Steve Donoghue looks at the politics of family.
Read MoreIn the 6th Century, Boethius wrote a little tract that has been a guide and touchstone to writers, poets, politicians, and pundits ever since. David Slavitt has produced a new translation of The Consolation of Philosophy; Steve Donoghue explores the world of Boethius in this latest installment of “A Year with the Romans.”
Read MoreAmong the Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb, Steve Donoghue unearths a rare secondhand treasure in Ovid’s difficult, underrated Fasti. And he celebrates.
Read MoreWould the inventor of “sprung rhythm” have lived a more carefree existence in a world that allowed him to live and love the way he wanted? What poetry would he write in such a world? Steve Donoghue takes a brisk dip into Paul Mariani’s Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life.
Read MoreBefore there was Norman Rockwell, there was J.C. Leyendecker, inventor of the advertising brand, star illustrator of The Saturday Evening Post, and clandestine gay man. America loved what Leyendecker drew; Steve Donoghue shows us what they were really seeing.
Read MoreThe kings and counts of Tudor England wouldn’t have known the name of minor Cheshire landowner Humphrey Newton, but in reviewing Deborah Youngs’ book on the man, Steve Donoghue illustrates just how much Newton can teach us about the era. “A Year with the Tudors” concludes here.
Read MoreBefore the pestiferous little Corsican conquered Europe, he tried his hand at Egypt – Steve Donoghue exposes how the general disposes in his review of Paul Strathern’s Napoleon in Egypt.
Read MoreIn the penultimate installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue pauses to consider some of the young men and women who didn’t quite make it onto the roster of Tudor monarchs.
Read MoreConfederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson achieved immortal fame in his Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862. Peter Cozzens re-examines the man behind the legend, and Steve Donoghue adjudges the results.
Read MoreWilliam Shakespeare lived under the Tudors for most of his life, but he only wrote about them once, in his play The History of the Life of King Henry VIII – or did he? In our latest One Encounter, and also the new installment in his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue takes a look at that play and the fractious theories attendant.
Read MoreNeither of Curtis Sittenfeld’s two previous books, Prep or The Man of My Dreams , gave her readers any hint of the subtlety, wit, and sheer storytelling power that is so abundantly on display in her latest novel. Steve Donoghue dives in.
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.