Reading Eric Blair
/Today George Orwell is a buzzword; what can his collected letters tell us about the man himself? G. Robert Ogilvy looks for the human being beneath the persona.
Read MoreMusic’s restless avant garde: Still a ‘wonderful adventure’
/Many composers and musicians believe we are in a golden age of experimental creativity in composition. So why does the general concert-going public hate the results?
Read MoreThe Shape of Things to Come
/All of European history - and beyond - plays out in new and fascinating variations of guns, germs, and steel in Paradox Interactive's new version of its popular video game Europa Universalis
Read MoreBehold the Man
/The meek and peaceful Jesus has become the standard Christian image of the Messiah. Religious scholar Reza Aslan's controversial new book shatters that image and replaces it with something very different: a violent revolutionary who came not to bring peace but a sword.
Read MoreMeanwhile, On the Top Shelf
/Alan Moore's Watchmen is widely regarded as the best graphic novel of them all, and Moore has been outspoken in his condemnation of sequels and spin-offs, refusing to sanction DC Comics' recent "Before Watchmen" string of mini-series. Was Moore right? Or is there creative life after his masterpiece? Justin Hickey explores.
Read MoreVegetable Wonder
/It became entangled with the imperial hopes of a nation and inspired the design of one of the most significant buildings of the 19th century, the Crystal Palace: a new book explores the remarkable story of the Amazonian water lily.
Read MoreMy Life as a Mannequin
/A young man on a tentative law school track encounters the fiction of Philip Roth, and suddenly, his lostness acquires a commanding sense of purpose. An essay by Barrett Hathcock.
Read MoreThe Heartless World
/'Everyone knows who won the war,’ runs the refrain of Muriel Rukeyser’s Savage Coast; her newly published 1930 novel about the Spanish Civil War shows what it meant to be a witness to it.
Read MoreAlready Dead
/In the latest video game iteration of the current media zombie craze, a history teacher from Georgia confronts the undead hordes - and what those hordes may say about contemporary America
Read MoreWhen One Lives Among Greyhounds
/The stories of British writer H.H. Munro, known by his pen-name Saki, are devastating studies in torment and cruelty; they're also exceptionally funny. A new collection offers a bracing reminder of that duality.
Read MoreNever Take Off the Mask: The Films of Gore Verbinski
/The man behind the trillion-dollar "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise (and, more recently, the high-profile "Lone Ranger" flop) has been characterized as a hack, a purveyor of standard-issue Hollywood dreck. But, asks Tucker Johnson, is there art buried in the films of Gore Verbinski?
Read MoreNothing Like Being Scared
/Shirley Jackson is best known – infamous, even – for her chilling story “The Lottery.” But it’s her novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle, where battle rages between evil within and without, that’s her masterpiece.
Read MoreArendt in New York City
/When Hannah Arendt published Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1964, her moral authority was called into question. Now Margarethe von Trotta’s new film Hannah Arendt explores both who has the right and who has the responsibility to speak about the Holocaust.
Read MoreMesophile Planet
/They breathe poison gas and eat old bones and stones; they are sightless, deaf, and ageless; they flourish in temperatures that would melt iron or freeze concrete; and they live on the strangest planet in the known universe: Earth
Read MoreKeeping Up with the Tudors: Him Again
/In the famous jingle 'divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived,' Katherine Parr comes last - the sixth wife of King Henry VIII. But she was far more than that - scholar, regent, and passionate young woman - as a new Tudor historical novel attempts to portray
Read MoreFrom the Archives: Summer Reading 2012 Continues
/Our feature continues, as more Open Letters folk share their annual Summer Reading recommendations!
Read MoreKeeping Up With The Tudors: Peace, Plenty, Love, Truth, Terror
/A debut novel of alternate history spins out one of the most tantalizing hypotheticals of the past: what if Anne Boleyn had managed to give King Henry VIII a healthy male heir? Some of the answers - and some of the resulting mysteries - may surprise you.
Read MoreAll the Absolutely Fabulous Gatsbys
/Baz Luhrmann's blockbuster is merely the newest Great Gatsby for film or television--four adaptations before it attempted to capture the dazzle and pathos of the classic. Matt Sadler us on a tour of West Egg across the decades.
Read MoreRage and Regulation
/"I hope they pay you well for your obedience, dog" - two new video games explore the parameters of authority and the constraints of law. Doesn't sound like a fun afternoon, but as Phillip Lobo discovers, there are darker pleasures lurking in the fine print of the social contract.
Read MoreAmerican Aristocracy | GODS OF COPLEY SQUARE | Magic II.
/Bohemian Back Bay was as key to Copley Square as aristocratic Back Bay and black artist models figured not only in Sargent's work, but in Fred Holland Day's too.
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