Thursday's Notes
Cathy Gere,"Restoring Faith: The ancient Minoan civilisation," History Today, July, argues that, when traditional religions were under attack, Arthur Evans offered Minos as a source of mythological reference. Gere is recently the author of Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism.
Michael Dirda,"A Woman of Masterful Persuasion," Washington Post, 16 July, reviews John Lukacs, ed., American Austen: The Forgotten Writing of Agnes Repplier.
Michael Kimmelman,"High-Born Prussians Who Defied Their Origin," NYT, 15 July, profiles Countess Elisabeth von der Schulenburg, whose Nazi family was at the heart of the plot against Hitler.
Howard Blum,"Murder Most Noir," NYT, 10 July, reviews Richard Rayner's A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age; and Janet Maslin,"A Hard-Boiled Look Back at a 1953 Kidnapping," NYT, 15 July, reviews John Heidenry's Zero at the Bone.
At the anniversary of Isaac Rosenfeld's death, Steven Zipperstein published his biography, Rosenfeld's Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing. It is reviewed by Michael Dirda, Adam Kirsch, and Scott McLemee. There's more in McLemee's"The Dangling Man," IHE, 15 July, and Margaret Soltan's"Styles of Radical Will," 15 July.
Dwight Garner,"A President Speaks His Truth and Takes His Licks," NYT, 15 July, reviews Kevin Mattson's "What The Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?" Jimmy Carter, America's ‘Malaise,' and the Speech That Should Have Changed the Country.