Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
Our book today is the English-language translation of Andrea Molesini’s utterly remarkable debut novel Not All Bastards Are From Vienna. The book originally appeared in 2010 and is here translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar and Patrick Creagh, and although I chuckled about it when the Englished version appeared last year (how could I […]
Read MoreOur book today is a delectable trifle, the perfect thing to brighten up a day-long snowstorm: The Duke, the first of author Kerrigan Byrne’s romance novels to break the lock-step of glottal fricatives that characterized The Highwayman, The Hunter, and The Highlander and strike out into new consonantal territory (will it be followed by The […]
Read MoreAs a revelatory new version shows, the original Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker's Dracula took more than a few liberties with the text ...
Read MoreA wide-ranging and deeply-researched new book chronicles the history of an influential Washington political salon
Read MoreOur book today is a bright little thing of wonder housed, this time around, in a brittle package: it’s a selection of the writings of John Burroughs called The Birds of John Burroughs: Keeping a Sharp Lookout, a volume published in 1976 by Hawthorn Books, edited by Jack Kligerman with nice stately black-and-white illustrations by […]
Read MoreYet another terrific week for DC Comics … which still feels distinctly odd to say. For the last five years or so, while DC’s lineup of iconic superheroes was in the throes of the company’s “New 52” continuity remake, I mostly dreaded seeing the titles on offer every week at Boston’s one-and-only Comicopia. From the […]
Read MoreThe great old fortress of good taste, Hardwick Hall, is the focus of a beautiful new anthology of essays on the place's storied art and architecture
Read MoreThe latest volume in the Yale English Monarchs series is a hefty new biography of the man who started the whole series in the first place: William the Conqueror
Read MoreA new book on the famous Tudor dynasty promises that most alluring of all perspectives on royalty: the back-stage details. But can it succeed? A Year with the Tudors continues.
Read MoreAn English-language translation of a monumental biography of the founder of modern essay form urges readers to remember the man, not the legend.
Read MoreDown below the sidewalks of London, a warren of secret rooms housed the war effort while bombs were falling on the city; a lavish new book tours the war rooms.
Read MoreAs a new book about Eisenhower and Kennedy makes clear, transitions of presidential power, especially between rival parties, have always been testy.
Read MoreLong before the Soviet gulag, Russian dissidents, criminals, and political exiles were sent to the vast frozen wasteland of Siberia. A grim new book tells their stories.
Read MoreThe Egyptian Revolution and its cataclysmic aftermath forms the subject of a riveting new book by a journalist and keen-eyed witness.
Read MoreOur book today at first almost seems like a blasphemy: it’s The Travels of Mark Twain from 1961, and its seeming blasphemy comes from the fact that Charles Neider is its editor rather than its author. Rather than a work of history and analysis about Mark Twain’s extensive travels, as its title might indicate, it’s […]
Read MoreFrom the late and much-honored poet CK Williams, one final work
Read MoreI couldn’t help but be charmed by the long essay by Joseph Epstein in last week’s Weekly Standard, despite its barrage of annoying ticks and quirks. The piece is called “Hitting Eighty,” and it’s the latest (and – sad thought – the last?) in what turns out to be a little series of pieces Epstein […]
Read MoreThe quintessential human feature - the large, expressive face - gets a thorough and fascinating scientific examination.
Read MoreThe week’s comics reflected a very, very old pattern of mine: buying for artists rather than writers. It would be wrong to say that for most of my comics-buying life I cared much more about a title’s artwork than about its writing; far closer to the truth to say I didn’t care about the writing […]
Read MoreThe famed writer of "You Know Me Al" was also a life-long prolific deadline writer. An invaluable new book collects the journalism of Ring Lardner.
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.