Archive
The complete Open Letters Monthly Archive.
There were layers and layers to John Marshall, one of America's first and in many ways most important Chief Justices of the Supreme Court - but just how deep does the latest biography go?
Read MoreA contentious Supreme Court in the headlines is hardly a new thing - nor is the Court being used for partisan politics and the brinksmanship of history, as Noah Feldman's Scorpions makes clear
Read MoreJames Madison was more cautious and purposeful than the temperamental Hamilton or the effusive Jefferson. Indeed, to paraphrase Brookhiser, Hamilton was a rocket, Jefferson was a kite, Madison was a ballast.
Read MoreA new biography explores the life of the erratic and headstrong 'forgotten' Founding Father who bankrolled a revolution and guided a new republic.
Read MorePatrick Henry uttered one of the most famous lines in American history, and a new biography attempts to claim him for a particular radical strain of popularism in contemporary politics. Give me liberty or give me... historical distortion?
Read MoreA new book argues that Theodore Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst stampeded the United States into the Spanish-American War to feed imperial ambition and sell some newspapers. Are the roots of modern America rotten?
Read MoreMore than any other figure in American history (including his hated rival Andrew Jackson), Henry Clay towered over the political landscape in the decades before the Civil War; two new books look at his legacy.
Read MoreWhen colonial tensions were at a boiling point, the British garrisoned troops on Boston Common and put the city under military occupation - until a certain Massacre, that is.
Read MoreFor half a century, Senator Ted Kennedy has been carving out a legacy in Congress. The legacy and the man come into focus in Thomas J. Daly’s review of Last Lion.
Read MoreThomas DiLorenzo, in Hamilton’s Curse, lays all the present-day woes of the United States at the feet of that most problematic of Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton. Did Aaron Burr do us all a favor? Thomas Daly weighs the prosecution’s case.
Read MoreEven would-be world-beater Napoleon was never able to subjugate his critics. In reviewing Philip Dwyer’s new book Napoleon: The Path to Power, Thomas J. Daly finds at least one such critic still bashing away at the diminutive Corsican.
Read MoreNapoleon came home from Elba to find his wine barrels dry, his floors scuffed, and a host of minor nobodies redistricting his continent. This was the celebrated Congress of Vienna, and Thomas J. Daly takes us through the maneuvers of Vienna 1814 by David King.
Read MoreAt the age of 64, ex-President John Quincy Adams did an unprecedented thing: he became a congressman. Thomas J. Daly looks back on the autumn of this remarkable man’s life in a review of Joseph Wheelan’s Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade.
Read MoreThe American Revolution’s neat conclusion at Yorktown is a familiar story from the history books. Thom Daly reads Perils of Peace as Thomas Fleming’s noble if flawed attempt to add more detail to our easy picture of events.
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