Things Noted Here & There

Paul Johnson,"Burn, Baby, Burn," Literary Review, April, reviews John Casey's After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory.

Katherine Duncan-Jones,"Much Ado About Nothing," Literary Review, April, reviews James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?.

Jon Meacham,"Southern Discomfort," NYT, 10 April, reflects on the proclamation of Confederate History Month by Virginia's Governor McDonnell. At least one of our colleagues finds Meacham's use of Robert Penn Warren"bizarre".

Jonathan Yardley reviews S. T. Joshi, ed., Mencken on Mencken: A New Collection of Autobiographical Writings for the Washington Post, 11 April.

Peter Beinart,"Politics and Faith," NYT, 9 April, reviews Ian Buruma's Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents; and Douglas Murray,"We're All Doomed," Literary Review, April, reviews Eric Kaufman's Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century.