Things Noted Here & There

Andrew Collins,"The key to Dan Brown's success," London Times, 15 August, anticipates the publication of Brown's The Lost Symbol.

Rachel L. Swarns,"Madison and the White House, Through the Memoir of a Slave," NYT, 15 August, tells the story of James Madison's slave, who published a memoir of his life in the White House.

David S. Reynolds,"Rebel Rebel," NYT, 14 August, reviews Sally Jenkins's and John Stauffer's The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded From the Confederacy. Stauffer doesn't even bother to defend a book he signed off on as co-author and Reynolds merely repeats criticism of it offered by bloggers at Civil War Memory and Renegade South.

Felix Salmon,"Blown Out," NYT, 13 August, reviews Frank Partnoy's The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals.

Brian Ladd,"Reaping the Whirlwind," NYT, 13 August, reviews Richard Bessel's Germany 1945: From War to Peace.

Leo Robson reviews Martin Stannard's Muriel Spark: the Biography for the New Statesman, 6 August.

Thomas J. Sugrue,"The New American Dream: Renting," WSJ, 15 August, argues that, for many Americans, home ownership isn't realistic.