Ten Questions for Sarah Ruden
/Sarah Ruden, the latest and greatest translator of Vergil’s Aeneid, offers a funny and fascinating glimpse inside the classicist’s world in this Open Letters interview.
Read MoreUncle Livy
/Steve Donoghue’s “Year with the Romans” turns its eye upon Titus Livius, who either wrote poetical history or historical poetry, depending on who you ask.
Read MoreReview of You Are Here
/Steve Donoghue digs into Donald Breckenridge's stylistically arresting "You Are Here"
Read MoreReview of Patient Zero
/"Patient Zero is full of sharp dialogue, rapid-fire action, fascinating (and, the author somewhat disturbingly promises us, entirely fact-based) patho-science, and a wide array of deftly drawn characters."
Read MoreA Review of A Naked Singularity
/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 MoreReview of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
/In his review of, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Steve Donoghue explains why this book might make you want to "punch" the author...
Read MoreBefore Nightfall
/Just 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 MoreGuide: The Aeneid of Vergil
/Virgil’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 MoreReview of Philip II of Macedonia
/In 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 MoreBook Review: Lowboy
/John Wray's Lowboy enters the New York subway system. Steve Donoghue follows it.
Read MoreBook Review: The Pluto Files
/In 2006 Pluto was officially taken off the list of planets. Neil deGrasse Tyson relates the ex-planet's story.
Read MorePresident Pepys
/Ronald 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 MoreThoughts on Terence
/He 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 MoreAnother World Than This
/They 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 MoreKeeping Up with the Romans: Sweet Bright Lady
/In 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 MoreOn Finding a Copy of Ovid’s Fasti at the Local Goodwill
/Among the Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb, Steve Donoghue unearths a rare secondhand treasure in Ovid’s difficult, underrated Fasti. And he celebrates.
Read MorePotato Style
/Would 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 MoreSemi-Obvious
/Before 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 More“For I am a Brid of Paradise”
/The 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 MoreSix Heads a Day
/Before 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.
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