Amy Chua,"Divided and Conquered," NYT, 23 March, reviews Anthony Pagden's Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West.

Leslie Mitchell,"Pistols in Putney," Literary Review, nd, reviews Giles Hunt's The Duel: Castlereagh, Canning and Deadly Cabinet Rivalry. Hat tip.

Emily Bazelon,"Good Faith," NYT, 23 March, reviews Martha C. Nussbaum's Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality.

Michael Kazin,"Clash of the Zealots," NYT, 23 March, reviews Walter McDougall's Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877.

Blake Gopnik,"Moving Beyond Beauty," Washington Post, 22 March, reviews"Gustave Courbet," an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum.

Colm Toibin,"Their Vilest Hour," NYT, 23 March, reviews Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization.

Jet Heer,"How Comic Books Ruined the Nation," Globe and Mail, 22 March, and Dennis Drabell,"Horror! Suspense! Censorship!," Washington Post, 23 March, review David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America; and Glen David Gold,"The Fantastic One," Washington Post, 23 March, reviews Mark Evanier's Kirby: King of Comics.

Nicholas Kristof,"Birth Control for Others," NYT, 23 March, reviews Matthew Connelly's Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population.

Gene Weingarten,"Cruel and Usual Punishment," Washington Post, 23 March:

The best informed person I ever knew was a friend of my grandfather's back in the Bronx, where I grew up. Every morning of every day of his life, this elderly man -- his name, as I recall, was Boris -- would dress impeccably in a suit and waistcoat and shuffle to the public library, where more than a dozen of the day's local and out-of-town newspapers were threaded through bamboo poles and hung from racks. One by one, Boris would read them all, front to back; at dusk, he would walk home alone. This daily pilgrimage was conducted with ecclesiastic solemnity, a quiet, dignified homage to the majesty of knowledge. Even as a little boy, in that intuitive if primitive way that children comprehend important things, I understood the fundamental truth that Boris was, in some clear but compelling way, a douche bag.