Archive
The complete Open Letters Monthly Archive.
He survived years of dangerous exile, won his crown on the battlefield, and founded one of the most famous dynasties in human history - and yet we still haven't embraced Henry VII. A spirited biography seeks to change that.
Read MoreMSNBC's Rachel Maddow has made a career of joking about easy political targets - so what happens when she tries to deliver a factual inquiry of a serious subject? Nothing funny, as Greg Waldmann discovers.
Read MoreThe clash between Brahmin liberalism and the legacy of slave-trading focuses on a monument to the men who redeemed a city and ransomed a nation. "American Aristocracy" continues.
Read MoreA new book takes readers back to a time when, according to historian Ira Shapiro, politics could sometimes be noble and senators could sometimes be giants.
Read MoreTo the quintessential virtues the Puritans lent to a fledgling republic - globality, philantropy, and autonomy - the 'speaking aristocracy' of the Boston Brahmins added one more: the love of learning
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 MoreAndrew Breitbart, the brash, conservative media warrior, died a few days ago. He was by all accounts a wonderful husband, father, and friend - but should that matter?
Read MoreAfter a brutal six months, Mitt Romney has won Florida and almost certainly the GOP nomination. Democrats and Republicans are rightly focused on his record, but they're each doing it for the wrong reasons.
Read MoreFor two terms, first as National Security Advisor and then as Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was the most - often the only - likeable face of the George W. Bush administration. But does this quintessential team player break ranks in her new memoir?
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 MoreMaligned as nothing but handsome breeding stock, this German import did more to redefine the role of the monarchy than any subsequent royal, consort or king.
Read MoreBoston without Brahmins, like Vienna without Jews, frames shifting capitoline visions, visions much more in the spirit than most realize of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who actually wrote: 'It dwarfs the mind to feed it on any localism.'
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 MoreHe lost his famous mother when he was a boy, became a teen idol, had a storybook wedding, and he's second in line to be King of England. The monarchy Prince William inherits will be like nothing his predecessors have experienced - if it exists at all. "A Year with the Windsors" concludes.
Read MoreA meticulously-researched rendition of the horrifying massacres that comprised the "Rape of Nanjing" is the backdrop for Ha Jin's latest telegraphic and affecting novel.
Read MoreJohn Nance Garner famously referred to the vice presidency as being not worth a bucket of warm, er, spit - and yet, during the two terms of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney used that office to wield unprecedented power. The former vice president writes an unapologetic memoir.
Read MoreHe's been waiting for the throne longer than any Prince of Wales before him, and he's changed the nature of the monarchy while he's been waiting. But will we ever see King Charles III? 'A Year with the Windsors' takes a look at the heir.
Read MoreLodestar or mirror? Passé or ne plus ultra? Elizabeth II has presided with consistency over an inconsistent age. And what have we learned of her?
Read MoreThe ethics of Wikileaks (and the antics of its mastermind, Julian Assange) continue to be the focus of controversy - and new books. Greg Waldmann takes a comprehensive look at the entire phenomenon.
Read MoreOne of the most significant voices of the Harlem Renaissance was Jessie Redmon Fauset -- novelist, essayist, translator, and editor. She's become obscured behind many of the male writers she published, but Joanna Scutts returns her poignant work to the main stage
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