You get a sense of the vitality of the ancient history blogosphere at Dave Meadows' Classicarnival. It appears weekly at Rogue Classicism.

Reviewing Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America ("The Empire in the Mirror," NY Times, 13 May), Walter Isaacson writes:"The only sure thing that can be said about the past is that anyone who can remember Santayana's maxim is condemned to repeat it." Scott McLemee reviews Are We Rome?here. Thanks to Eric Muller for the tip.

At Patahistory, Dave Davisson reports that James Burke's 1985 series for BBC,"The Day the Universe Changed," is now available on YouTube.

Robert Dallek's Nixon and Kissenger: Partners in Power is reviewed by Mark Atwood Lawrence for the NY Times and Margaret MacMillan for the Washington Post.

In the midst of the"war on terror," Christopher Shea's"War without Limits," Boston Globe, 13 May, looks at new work by historians like David Bell of Johns Hopkins, Omer Bartov of Brown, Ian Patterson of Cambridge, and Roger Chickering of George Washington on modernity's"total war." Did it pre-date the industrial revolution and is it a thing of the past? Thanks to Dale Light for the tip.

Finally, congratulations to our colleague, Rob MacDougall, who is featured over on HNN's mainpage as the Top Young Historian of the Week!