Memory in One
/a poem
Read MoreSo Much Bastard Beauty
/A lovely rural landscape is seen throught urban-trained eyes in Ada Limon's poetry collection Bright Dead Things. David Nilson reviews.
Read MoreThe Ground Beneath Their Feet
/The promise and the limits of the Arab Spring receive some well-written - and necessarily sobering - reporting in Robert Worth's A Rage for Order. Greg Waldmann reviews.
Read MoreCreature Report
/a poem
Read MoreOut of Some Bygone Era
/Master stylist Donald Ray Pollock returns in a violent, beautifullly-written novel about three brothers on a murderous rampage. Aaron Botwick reviews The Heavenly Table
Read MoreFrom the Archives: Summer Reading 2012
/As the haze and heat of summer kick into full swing, the folk of Open Letters break out their annual Summer Reading recommendations!
Read MoreFrom the Archives: Summer Reading 2015 - Cool Reads
/This year the staff and contributors of Open Letters Monthly recommend their summer reads with an unusual theme: the cold.
Read MoreComfort and Joy
/Mary Balogh’s Survivors’ Club novels are romances, which means they tell hopeful stories about people whose struggles end happily. Why should that optimism earn them such disdain?
Read MoreBook Review: Melville in Love
/Did an unconventional Berkshires beauty provide the inspiration for Herman Melville to write his great masterpiece? A new book thinks it would be lovely to think so.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Lucas Debargue
/In an era replete with talented young competition winners, Lucas Debargue, who placed fourth in the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition, stands out.
Read MoreBook Review: Louis XVI
/The glittering Bourbon king who lost his head to the Revolution gets a sumptuous newly-expanded biography
Read MoreBook Review: Toward Democracy
/The long and constantly-unfinished process of democracy is given a sprawling examination in James Kloppenberg's new book.
Read MoreBook Review: The Cavendon Luck
/The Second World War closes in on the two families bravely struggling to keep Cavendon Hall alive.
Read MoreBook Review: Commander in Chief
/In 1943, American President Franklin Roosevelt faced the strong-willed rivalry of his own nominal ally, Winston Churchill
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Shostakovich chamber music
/These three Shostakovich chamber works span the composer's whole career, and together they constitute a musical self-portrait with few equals.
Read MoreBook Review: MacArthur at War
/The mercurial, often infuriating Pacific Theater commander Douglas MacArthur is the subject of Walter Borneman's terrific new book
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - All you need is Bach
/Cameron Carpenter is virtuosic, effervescent, totally in command of his pipes and sometimes quirky enough to make you rethink the piece from core principles. But does that approach work in Bach?
Read MoreBook Review: The Bitter Taste of Victory
/Lara Feigel's new book delves into the landscape of the apocalypse: Germany in the immediate wake of Allied victory.
Read MoreBook Review: In Gratitude
/Novelist and essayist Jenny Diski faithfully chronicled her own dying from cancer. A new book collects her last and greatest literary work.
Read MoreBook Review: Anatomy of Malice
/A gripping new book looks at a quartet of the worst Nazi war criminals to stand trial.
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