Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
Their brains - their digits - their eyes - their locomotion - their families - their staggeringly long reign over the planet Earth: it's all here, and much, much more. The greatest dinosaur reference work just got even better.
Read MoreOne hundred years ago this month, the luxury liner Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, with the loss of over 1500 lives. The centenary has released a flood of books, including some gems not to be missed.
Read MoreHe fought a world war with France, survived the Black Death, and gave England a real Parliament. Froissart and Chaucer loved him, Shakespeare (almost) wrote about him, and the Victorians disparaged him. He was Edward III, and he has a king-sized new biography from Yale University Press.
Read MoreIn his latest adventure, (mostly) reformed thief Charlie Howard finds trouble in the much-storied Queen of the Adriatic.
Read MoreSteve Donoghue grapples with the initial irritations and eventual pleasures of Joanna Smith Rakoff's A Fortunate Age: "The process that changes your reaction will be familiar to anyone who’s ever been seduced by New York (a sordid, delectable experience that can happen repeatedly throughout your life – and against which there is no known vaccine)."
Read MoreThe famous Civil War diarist, whose eloquent pessimism was given voice in Ken Burns's "The Civil War", receives a much-needed repackaging by Penguin Classics
Read MoreTeenage Catherine Howard weds the older and ailing Henry VIII to serve her family's ambition, and uses her status to take lovers of her own - risking everything. Novelist Suzannah Dunn spins a fine tale out of the girl's brief rise and fall.
Read MoreHer reign was epic in length and social impact, but it very nearly didn't happen at all. She ruled through two generations of her people, and she left the British monarchy very different from how she found it. She is Queen Victoria, and our Year with the Windsors starts as it must: with her.
Read MoreThomas Lawrence was the rising young star painter of the politicians, soldiers, rakes, and mistresses of Regency London, but his work had a life and intelligence that transcended the trendy. A new book looks at a forgotten master.
Read MoreFor two centuries, he's been the founding myth of his nation: first in war, first in peace, Washington the paragon. Ron Chernow's new biography does nothing to tarnish that image -- but should it?
Read MoreIn addition to their gods and goddesses, the ancient Greeks worshiped youth and athletic prowess, and their foremost bard was Pindar.
Read MoreWhat we know about Edward II came from the brilliant mind of Christopher Marlowe. A new biography seeks to separate the real man from the dramatist’s fertile imagination.
Read MoreAt her trial, Anne Boleyn was accused of adultery, witchcraft, and incest - charges long mocked by historians. But a new book asks: is it possible Anne was actually guilty?
Read MoreSteven Moore's big new book seeks to give an 'alternative history' to that most familiar of literary forms, the novel. But at what point does history become wishful thinking?
Read MoreWhen John Ruskin, the foremost architectural critic of the Victorian era, discovered Venice, he fell in love. An elaborate new work paints the picture in great detail.
Read MoreThe glory that was Rome lived on - in a strange new form - for a thousand years in the East, despite being beset by enemies on all sides. A new study illuminates how they managed it.
Read MoreThe Glorious Revolution of 1688 was peaceful, orderly, and above all sensible, or so says towering Victorian historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. Two new books look at the man and the Revolution he so indelibly described.
Read MoreCan Fantagraphics' Spectrum series of contemporary fantasy art yield the same sort of enjoyment as a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Steve Donoghue looks into the newest collection.
Read MoreJohn D'Agata continues his exploration of the essay with a big new anthology. Steve Donoghue reviews The Lost Origins of the Essay.
Read MoreJohn Freeman writes a heartfelt manifesto against email and Steve Donoghue reviews it
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.