Archive
The complete Open Letters Monthly Archive.
For years, pioneering blogger Andrew Sullivan was one of the most vocal supporters of the war in Iraq. Time and the war's wretched progress gradually forced him to change his thinking, however, and a new collection of his writings on the subject charts the disillusioning step-by-step.
Read MoreSpike Jonze is the most mainstream of indie directors -- or the most indie of mainstream directors -- and his newest film Her is a triumph of quirky charm and visionary depth. Matt Sadler reviews.
Read More-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read MoreThe player is alone in the game, both sole survivor and unquestioned sovereign, but what's at the heart of such games? Phillip Lobo examines the loneliness of the long-distance gamer
Read MoreIn self-imposed exile from England, Lord Byron entered a tempestuous love affair with Italy, renting palaces, swimming the canals of Venice, treating his loved ones abominably, and writing great poetry the whole time. The two-part "Byron in Italy" concludes the epic tale.
Read MoreHaving tried therapy and medication to treat his anxiety disorder, Scott Stossel turned to writing. His new book, part memoir, part cultural history, may be an essential document of our agitated age.
Read MoreWhat — and who — is required to maintain a public persona of the magnitude of Margaret Atwood’s? A new book explores the phenomenon and implications of literary celebrity.
Read MoreShe was the daughter, the sister, and the wife of kings in one of England's most turbulent periods, but Alison Weir's new biography is the first to make us feel we really know Elizabeth of York.
Read MoreByron was mad, bad, and dangerous to know -- and eventually his amorous, adventurous spirit led him to Italy.
Read More"Do you see?" the Narrator says. "Don't you know you were dead the minute you hit Start?" Phillip Lobo deciphers The Stanley Parable
Read MoreLed on by a "shared obsession," a philosopher and a psycyhoanalyst have teamed up to offer their interpretation of Hamlet. With the ghosts of countless critics looming before them, how has this pair fared?
Read MoreJohn Singer Sargent is often simplistically dismissed as a picture-postcard portraitist. A new exhibition of his watercolors is a reminder of how strange and subversive--not to say beautiful--his work could be.
Read MoreFrom the agora 2,400 years ago to the present day, the schools of Plato and Aristotle have been locked in combat; a new book sees the struggle in disarmingly simple terms.
Read MoreJonathan Franzen has translated and annotated a collection of essays by Karl Kraus, the Austrian polemicist known as the Great Hater and one of the signal curmudgeonly influences behind Franzen's fiction.
Read MoreHow do you follow up on creating Tarzan of the Apes? You give the Ape-Man a son, stranding him in the jungle, and sending him out on hair-raising adventures of his own. And if you're lucky, a legendary comic book artist will come along and draw it all.
Read MoreThroughout its history, humankind has been both terrified by and obsessed with monsters - hence the booming 'cryptid' industry, traversing the globe in search of legendary beasts like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. A new book looks at the science and psychology behind our modern bogeymen.
Read MoreThe style of Clarice Lispector's unconventional and uneasy fiction was driven by both social anxiety and physical pain. How did this transubstantiation take place?
Read MoreThick with atmosphere, lush with visual design, and sporting more than a few influences of steampunk, "Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs" is a video game Karl Marx might have played - and even enjoyed.
Read MoreThe Modernist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker was Immortalized (and insulted) in Rilke's "Requiem for a Friend," yet who today knows her art? A new monograph returns it to the public eye.
Read MoreHenry Darger, icon of Outsider Art, created unnerving scenes of naked, tortured children. A new biography sets out to clear his name from would-be charges of pedophilia--but is it a reputation that really needs saving?
Read More
Powered by Squarespace.