Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
"How a Court LOOKS," remarked a courtier to one of England's more successful modern-day monarchs, "is at least as important as how a Court WORKS." A re-issued study from Philip Mansel looks at form and function in the court of Napoleon Bonaparte
Read More"Austria," quipped Talleyrand, "has the tiresome habit of always being beaten" - but Richard Bassett's vigorous new history of the Imperial Austrian Army begs to differ!
Read MoreA French army and a British army stumble upon each other in the wilderness of the New World, and their conflict changes the nature of the world's biggest war
Read MoreThe epic change in ancient Rome from a Republic to an Empire hinged on one man: Julius Caesar. A new history tells the familiar story.
Read MoreA veteran state conflict analyst looks at the mother of such conflicts: the long strife between Israel and Palestine
Read MoreA teenager in Kyoto tries to face the last months of his life as a samurai would - with a little help from his friends
Read MoreThe famous bloody encounter at the center of Albert Camus' novel The Stranger is re-imagined from a new perspective in Kamel Daoud's widely-praised debut
Read MoreIn the wake of Bangladesh's bloody Liberation War, a hapless nonentity suddenly finds himself impersonating a beloved national leader
Read MoreVeteran historian John Julius Norwich attempts to cram over 800 years of Sicilian history into 300 pages - and because he's John Julius Norwich, he very nearly succeeds
Read MoreOur book today is John Rowland’s warm and wonderful 1947 classic Cache Lake Country, ostensibly about the author’s small rough-living getaway cabin deep in the vast Ontario North Woods, although as Rowland makes clear at the outset, the quiet and sheer beauty of the place almost abstracts the place from any map or guidebook: On […]
Read MoreFederal contractor Jack Taylor takes an unprecedented high-altitude space jump - but when he breaks the sound barrier and makes his landing, he finds himself in a different reality
Read MoreWhen it comes to genre fiction, could there be any words more encouraging than “First in a New Series”? Mysteries, sci-fi, and especially fantasy and romance tend to favor books-in-series to an absolutely exorbitant extent, to the point where by the time you happen to run across a series that might want to read, you […]
Read MoreIn Max Gladstone's latest "Craft" sequence novel, what looks like a straightforward neighborhood gentrification suddenly threatens to unleash the wrath of the gods themselves
Read MoreThe latest monumental anthology from Gardner Dozois of the best the sci-fi genre has to offer
Read MoreAs I’ve noted on many occasions, book-reviewing can be tricky business for people who aren’t me. Most reviewers have actual personal lives, for instance, and I’ve heard that those can take up time and effort, entail trips to Ikea, and sometimes lead the unwary into the wilds of Canada. Most reviewers likewise devote ungawdly number […]
Read MoreIn his beautifully-written new book, ecologist Carl Safina takes a broader look at the emotional and mental lives of nonhuman animals
Read MoreA professor of Italian clings to Dante's Divine Comedy when confronted with an unthinkable tragedy in his own life
Read MoreThe half-legendary Maid of Orleans gets a refreshingly wide-angled new history from Helen Castor
Read MoreA memoir of the first President Bush, written by his former Chief of Staff
Read MoreIn a mere 200 pages on the history of writing, Matthew Battles takes readers from ancient China and Sumeria to Gutenberg to - oh my, are we out of time already?
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.