Ian Kershaw,"The Writing Life," Washington Post, 19 October, argues that"sometimes history just depends on that next cup of coffee."

Our colleague, Hugo Schwyzer's"‘Performative Ambiguity' and heterosexual privilege," Hugo Schwyzer, 10 October, reflects on being"a straight man teaching queer history."

Jill Lepore,"Bound for Glory," New Yorker, 20 October, is an essay about Andrew Jackson and the American campaign biography.

Jean Edward Smith,"Crisis Manager," NYT, 19 October, reviews James McPherson's Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.

Randy Kennedy,"The Cuba Libre Clan," NYT, 17 October, reviews Tom Gjelten's Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause.

Claire Messud,"A Maid of One's Own," NYT, 17 October, reviews Alison Light's Mrs. Woolf and the Servant: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury.

Jonathan Yardley reviews Nicholas deB. Katzenbach's Some of It Was Fun: Working with RFK and LBJ for the Washington Post, 19 October.

David Kamp,"Cartoons for Grown-Ups," NYT, 17 October, reviews Jules Feiffer's Explainers.

Michael Dirda reviews Robert Clark's Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces for the Washington Post, 19 October.

Finally, congratulations to our former colleague at Cliopatria, Alan Allport, whose daughter, Katharine Grace, was born last night at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia.