Things Noted Here & There

The National Book Critics Circle Awards for 2009 were announced on Thursday night. Unsurprisingly, they included: Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall for Fiction, Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science for General Nonfiction, and Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life for Biography.

Eric Ormsby,"Butchers and Saints," NYT, 12 March, reviews Jonathan Phillips's Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades.

Jacqueline Jones,"Black Like Whom?" Slate, 14 March, reviews Ira Berlin's The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations.

Sarah Wheeler,"The Frozen Unknown," NYT, 11 March, reviews Anthony Brandt's The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage.

Joan Waugh,"Ulysses S. Grant earned his $50 bill," LA Times, 8 March, and Sean Wilentz,"Who's Buried in the History Books?" NYT, 13 March, argue against replacing U. S. Grant with Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill.

Gary Indiana,"Making Our Mark," bookforum, February/March, and Scott Martelle,"Mark Twain's vendetta volume," LA Times, 14 March, review Laura Skandera Trombley's Mark Twain's Other Woman: The Hidden Story of His Final Years.

Christopher Taylor,"Roth, Pinter, Berlin and Me," LRB, 11 March, reviews Clive James's The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years.

Christopher Benfey,"Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit," TNR, 13 March, reviews Raymond Carver's Raymond Carver: Collected Stories and Carol Sklenicka's Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life.

Joshua Hammer,"Death Squad," NYT, 11 March, reviews Jim Frederick's Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent Into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death.