Jonathan Dresner hosts History Carnival CVI at Frog in a Well, Japan. An excellent carnival, Jon!

Art History Carnival for February 2012 is up at Margaret's The Earthly Paradise.

Biblioblog Carnival for February 2012 is up at Amanda's Cheese-Wearing Theology.

Alec Ash interviews "Geoff Dyer on Unusual Histories," The Browser, 3 February, for his recommendation of five examples of excellent innovative history.

"The Oldest Modernist Paintings," Smithsonian, February, has a slide show of ancient Egypt's Fayum portraits. Willis G. Regier, "Siege of the ‘Iliad'," CHE, 27 January, reviews Richmond Lattimore, trans., The Iliad of Homer, Stephen Mitchell, trans., The Iliad by Homer, and Anthony Verity, trans., The Iliad by Homer. Alvin Levinovitz, "I Greet You in the Middle of a Great Career: A Brief History of Blurbs," The Millions, 1 February, tracks the verbal corruption to ancient Rome.

Tracy Lee Simmons reviews John M. Barry's Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty for the Washington Post, 3 February. Lucy Worsley, "First Stirrings," Financial Times, 3 February, reviews Faramerz Dabhoiwala's The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution. Frances Wilson, "Jokes of Old," Literary Review, February, reviews Simon Dickie's Cruelty & Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century. The new Common-Place is up. Its theme is "Scientific Americans" in the 18th & 19th centuries.

Joanna Scutts reviews John Matteson's The Lives of Margaret Fuller for the Washington Post, 3 February.

Pankaj Mishra, "Orwell's heir?" Prospect, 25 January, Neal Ascherson for the Guardian, 2 February, and Francis Fukuyama, "One Man's History," NYT, 3 February, review Tony Judt's Thinking the Twentieth Century. Adam Kirsch, "Half Human," The Book, 1 February, reviews Michael Hofmann, ed. & trans., Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters. Daisy Banks interviews "Paul Preston on the Spanish Civil War" for his recommendations of five essential books on the subject. John Spurling, "The Aftermath," The Book, 1 February, reviews Kwasi Kwarteng's Ghosts of Empire: Britain's Legacy in the Modern World.

Perry Anderson, "Sino-Americana," LRB, 9 February, reviews Ezra Vogel's Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Henry Kissinger's On China, and Jay Taylor's The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China.