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	<description>Bestselling author of Above the Fire</description>
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		<title>Yesterday&#8217;s Idea of a Modern Man</title>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael O'Donnell]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Nov 2025 17:23:57 +0000</pubDate>
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		<category><![CDATA[The Atlantic]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[Sam Shepard wasn't born a cowboy. The actor and writer made himself into one. The dusty blue jeans, cattle drives, and folksy drawl suited his taciturn profile, giving Reagan-era America someone rugged to admire.]]></description>
		
		
		
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		<title>Emptying the Bookshelves</title>
		<link>https://www.michael-odonnell.com/unpacking-my-fathers-bookshelves/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael O'Donnell]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Dec 2023 19:13:18 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Reviews & Essays]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[The Wall Street Journal]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[“We’re going through Dad’s bookshelves and wondered if you’d like us to save some things for you?” This innocent question, posed by phone in the fortnight between my father’s death and his memorial service]]></description>
		
		
		
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		<title>Writing in Reverse</title>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael O'Donnell]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 Nov 2023 14:23:13 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Reviews & Essays]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[The Millions]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[Hilary Mantel wrote with a novelist’s flair and a historian’s mind. Her fiction overflows with the busy detritus of life: this plate of fruit, that whispered threat, children at play, a plucked string. The accretion of detail]]></description>
		
		
		
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		<title>Criticism, Anyone?</title>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael O'Donnell]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Jun 2023 23:11:52 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Reviews & Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Millions]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[I once invited Martin Amis to play tennis. The year was 2007 and he was visiting Chicago to promote his latest novel, House of Meetings. After his book talk, I lined up with other audience members to get my copy signed]]></description>
		
		
		
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		<title>Red Leader</title>
		<link>https://www.michael-odonnell.com/red-leader/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael O'Donnell]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Feb 2022 15:12:47 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Reviews & Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Wall Street Journal]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[Edward Gibbon sits proudly upon my bookshelf. A set of volumes that I own, neatly stacked, comprises his “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” What do you make of me because it is there? The set might indicate]]></description>
		
		
		
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		<title>My Captain Jacks</title>
		<link>https://www.michael-odonnell.com/my-captain-jacks/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael O'Donnell]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2020 15:34:42 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Reviews & Essays]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[The Wall Street Journal]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.michael-odonnell.com/?p=929</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[I don’t know anyone else who’s got a tailor-made work of art. Not tailor-made in the sense of a commissioned piece or a personal gift. I’m not referring to dedicatees. Nor do I mean favorites. Everyone has favorites. I mean stumbling across a film or novel]]></description>
		
		
		
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		<title>The Common Miracles</title>
		<link>https://www.michael-odonnell.com/the-common-miracles/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael O'Donnell]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2020 01:26:14 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Reviews & Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Wall Street Journal]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[What is a mountain: Is it a trophy or a temple? Recently we have begun to claim nature’s grandest tableaux as prizes. Alex Honnold climbs El Capitan with no rope. Crowded rows of paying customers line the summit ridge of Mount Everest like Black Friday shoppers]]></description>
		
		
		
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		<title>Slow Down, Holbrooke!</title>
		<link>https://www.michael-odonnell.com/the-hustling-sweating-flawed-greatness-of-holbrooke/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael O'Donnell]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2019 19:49:49 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Reviews & Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Washington Monthly]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[The late American diplomat Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) had a knack, that is to say a weakness, for self-promotion. He lobbied for the Nobel Peace Prize. He hinted broadly that he could serve as secretary of state. When one of his old friends died, Holbrooke petitioned the man’s widow to be included among the eulogists. During ...]]></description>
		
		
		
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		<title>In Search of Lost Dublin</title>
		<link>https://www.michael-odonnell.com/in-search-of-lost-dublin/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael O'Donnell]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Feb 2018 18:29:02 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Reviews & Essays]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[The Wall Street Journal]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[The other morning, my wife and I arrived early to breakfast. The restaurant had not yet opened so we took a walk, even though the day was cold. Chicago’s West Loop is a supremely fashionable neighborhood but rough at the edges, a remnant of its recent industrial past. Each intersection therefore entailed some question as ...]]></description>
		
		
		
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		<title>Restoring Henry</title>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael O'Donnell]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Sep 2015 21:52:25 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Book Reviews & Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Washington Monthly]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[In 1940 the young Henry Kissinger, caught in a love quadrangle, drafted a letter to the object of his affections. Her name was Edith. He and his friends Oppus and Kurt admired her attractiveness and had feelings for her, the letter said. But a “solicitude for your welfare” is what prompted him to write—“to caution ...]]></description>
		
		
		
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