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2 weeks ago | 
openlettersreview.com | Steve Donoghue
Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticingby Lili TaylorCrown Publishing 2025Actress Lili Taylor, it turns out, is an avid birder when she's not on-camera, a board member of the National Audubon Society, the American Birding Association, and something called the New York City Bird Alliance.
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2 weeks ago | 
openlettersreview.com | Steve Donoghue
Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake Tor 2025 There's “It is a truth universally acknowledged …,” and also “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day,” and there's “Call me Ishmael,” and even “They threw me off the hay truck about noon.” And then there's the opening of Olivie Blake's new novel Gifted & Talented (the part that comes right after the book's dedication: “for my family (lol)”): “Meredith Wren, a fucking asshole, not that it matters at this state of the narrative but it's...
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3 weeks ago | 
openlettersreview.com | Steve Donoghue
The Scientist and the Serial Killer:The Search for Houston's Lost Boysby Lise OlsenRandom House 2025Although he was the dark forerunner of famous serial killers like John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderous “Candyman” of Houston, Dean Corll, is largely unknown today except to Houston residents of a certain vintage or to true crime aficionados.
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3 weeks ago | 
openlettersreview.com | Steve Donoghue
Speeches & Writingsby John Quincy AdamsDavid Waldstreicher, editorLibrary of America 2025“The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull,” quipped legendary Secretary of State Dean Acheson.
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3 weeks ago | 
openlettersreview.com | Steve Donoghue
Birds, Sex, and Beauty: The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin’s Strangest Idea By Matt Ridley Harper 2025 Matt Ridley opens his new book with a description of a lek, a mating gathering of Black Grouse in the Pennine Hills, which he gamely describes:It’s a sex market, in which the male suppliers of sperm fight for the right to satisfy very discerning female customers and usually only one male succeeds.
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1 month ago | 
openlettersreview.com | Steve Donoghue
Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kingsby Ferdowsitranslated by Ahmad SadriLiveright 2025The Dick Davis translation of Ferdowsi's great Persian Book of Kings, the Shahnameh, which appeared in 2006 and has since been adopted by the Penguin Classics line, was a great heavy brick of a thing when it was first published by Viking, nearly 1000 pages.
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1 month ago | 
openlettersreview.com | Steve Donoghue
Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen By Hallie Rubenhold Dutton 2025 When people stopped seeing his wife shortly after the end of January 1910 in London, the meek and kindly Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen did two things: he started telling people that his wife and moved to California and died there, and he installed his mistress, Ethel Le Neve, in his home at Hilltop Crescent, where she began wearing the missing Belle Elmore's furs and jewels when the couple entertained guests.
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1 month ago | 
openlettersreview.com | Steve Donoghue
Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Ageby Ada PalmerUniversity of Chicago Press 2025Ada Palmer's big new book, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age, comes thickly bethorned with temptations, the first certainly being the prospect of a good solid eye-roll at the book's title. Readers of history are wary of straw men under the best of circumstances, but “Golden Age”? Haven't we seen this particular straw man too many times?
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1 month ago | 
openlettersreview.com | Steve Donoghue
Close to Home:The Wonders of Nature Just Outside Your DoorBy Thor HansonBasic Books 2025The point at the heart of conservation biologist Thor Hanson’s new book Close to Home has been made in over a dozen recent books as humanity is increasingly drawn to urban sprawls: this doesn’t necessarily mean a divorce from the natural world. Anyone lucky enough to have yard space of any kind can attest to this, provided they’ve taken the time to go and examine that space.
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1 month ago | 
openlettersreview.com | Steve Donoghue
Inside the Stargazer’s Palace:The Transformation of Science in 16th-Century EuropeBy Violet Muller Pegasus Books 2025The epicenter of the 16th-Century scientific revolution was undoubtedly the 1543 contention by Copernicus that Earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around. But in her delightfully enthusiastic new book Inside the Stargazer’s Palace, historian Violet Muller proposes a potential rival: a very visible change in the night sky.
