Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
Our book today is A Silver-Plated Spoon, the sparkling 1959 memoir by John Ian Russell, who in 1953 became, somewhat late in life, the 13th Duke of Bedford and the master of spectacular Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire. It was an amazing ascension – the family has occupied the place for four centuries – but Russell [...]
Read MoreThere’s a certain frustration that can’t be avoided when you read as much book-coverage in the Penny Press as I do. You become familiar with all the regular players in the game (indeed, you sometimes perforce become a minor such player yourself), you learn their quirks and strengths and weaknesses, and you also become familiar [...]
Read MoreThe Oxford University Press, centuries old and the biggest academic press in the world, founded its World’s Classics series in 1906 (having bought the imprimatur lock, stock, and barrel from the brilliant publisher Grant Richards in 1901). For over a hundred years, the line has produced reasonably-priced and expertly-edited canonical texts, proving that great and [...]
Read MoreThe cult favorite HBO western inspires an anthology of essays devoted to the show's most outrageous feature: its language (foul and otherwise)
Read MoreHow do you follow up on creating Tarzan of the Apes? You give the Ape-Man a son, stranding him in the jungle, and sending him out on hair-raising adventures of his own. And if you're lucky, a legendary comic book artist will come along and draw it all.
Read MoreA girl, a widow, a matriarch, a mother, a businesswoman, and a minister's slave: a new history traces the Salem Witch Trials through the lives of six women who paid dearly for their proximity to one of the most mysterious incidents in American history
Read MoreOur book today is a lovely volume called The Illustrated Bede, produced by John Marsden, translated by John Gregory, and featuring dozens and dozens of gorgeous full-color photographs by Geoff Green. The thing was put out by Floris Books in 1989, and it features chunks of translations from Bede’s various eighth-century Latin bestsellers, interspersed with [...]
Read MoreThe author of the hit "The World Without Us" returns with a new book in which he ponders whether or not a world WITH us is even possible - and what it would cost.
Read MoreA riveting new book looks at the catastrophe that befell Germany's Jewish performers and composers when the Nazis came to power.
Read MoreOf course the dance of disagreement is the primary three-step when readers encounter reviewers in the Penny Press – we all know that going in. But some weeks are more trying – and more exhilarating – than others. Take my most recent batch, for example: on virtually every other page, there was something I either [...]
Read MoreOur book today is Joseph Markulin‘s big fat new historical novel Machiavelli: A Renaissance Life, which seeks to do for the author of The Prince what Irving Stone did with such resounding sense for Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy half a century ago: dramatize the life of a famous figure in history from [...]
Read MoreA symposium of distinguished scholars dissects the wildly ambitious and varied artistic life of the great William Kent
Read MoreA young man born and raised in the wild of Yosemite Valley is forced into a series of confrontations with an encroaching outside world.
Read MoreSome Penguin Classics, as we’ve had occasion to note a few times in this ongoing series, are long overdue. This is especially true – and especially understandable – when it comes to the literature of the 20th century; not only are title so fresh in time often still net-tangled in questions of copyright and [...]
Read MoreThe Oxford University Press, centuries old and the biggest academic press in the world, founded its World’s Classics series in 1906 (having bought the imprimatur lock, stock, and barrel from the brilliant publisher Grant Richards in 1901). For over a hundred years, the line has produced reasonably-priced and expertly-edited canonical texts, proving that great [...]
Read MoreA big, riveting new history looks at the unforgettable men and women who filled the history of the most tumultuous three-decade span in American history
Read MoreAs impossible as it is to believe, Vanity Fair is 100 years old. And yet I must believe it, for there’s Graydon Carter telling me so in his “Editor’s Letter” opening this extra-big anniversary issue, pompously holding court as he’s done so inimitably for what feels like most of those 100 years. Carter headed the [...]
Read MoreWhat if each one of the original 79 'Star Trek' TV episodes had instead been a full-length movie? A stellar new collection of the posters for those movies boldly goes where no theater-goer has gone before
Read MoreThe popular teacher and blogger collects her most memorable book reviews from the last dozen years
Read MoreA magnificent new volume tours Egyptian history - starting a mind-bogglingly long time ago
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.