Thursday's Notes

Melissa Bellanta hosts History Carnival LXXXVII on Saturday 1 May at The Vapour Trail. Send nominations of the best in April's history blogging to her at m.bellanta*at*uq*dot*edu*dot*au or use the form.

Second Wave commentary:

Garrison Keillor,"Confessions of a Plagiarist," IHT, 28 April, identifies with Stephen Ambrose's plagiarism and claims to a close relationship with Eisenhower.

Jonathan Jones,"Orlando Figes and the Russian civil war," Guardian: On Art, 28 April, seeing the attack on him as academic snobbery of popular history, defends Figes.

Bee Wilson,"The bitter history of sugar," TLS, 28 April, reviews Elizabeth Abbott's Sugar: A Bittersweet History.

Congratulations to the winners of the LA Times Book Prizes:

in Biography, to Linda Gordon for Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits; and

in History, to Kevin Starr for Golden Dreams: California in the Age of Abundance, 1950-1963.