Nov 11, 2009

Mid-Week Notes

by Cliopatria

Peter Stothard,"The School of Athens," WSJ, 10 November, reviews Donald Kagan's Thucydides: The Reinvention of History.

Jan Swafford,"Nature's Rejects: The music of the castrati," Slate, 9 November, revisits an outcast dimension of 16th to 19th century European music.

Philip Kennicott,"Far out of Africa," Washington Post, 11 November, reviews"The African Presence in México: From Yanga to the Present," an exhibit at Washington, DC's Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum.

Paul Harvey,"Inventing a Tradition," Books & Culture, 9 November, takes apart Jonathan Bean's claim in Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader to have identified a classical liberating tradition in American race relations.

Julian Barnes,"On we sail," LRB, is an essay about Guy de Maupassant, occasioned by new English translations of two of his novels.

Adam Kirsch,"The November Pogrom," Tablet, 10 November, reviews Alan Steinweis's Kristallnacht 1938.

More Comments:

Jon Bean - 11/13/2009

See here:

http://tinyurl.com/yg3nvjn

and my comments at his blog:

http://tinyurl.com/ybrmpg6

The over-the-top nature of his 'review' led me to write my first-ever response to a book review. It is entirely misleading (and he uses MLK's inclusion in the most dishonest way -- read my comment response on that score).

Damon Root stumbled on the same "review":

http://reason.com/blog/2009/11/11/classical-liberalism-and-race