Friday's Notes

Serena Golden,"History, Not Politics," IHE, 21 May, reports on Jonathan Spence's Thomas Jefferson Lecture in Washington, DC,"When Minds Met: China and the West in the Seventeenth Century."

Witold Rybczynski,"The Godfather," Slate, 19 May, is a slide show, illustrating the influence of 16th century Italy's Andrea Palladio on American architecture.

Michael Grunwald,"Compromised," The Book, 21 May, reviews Robert V. Remini's At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise that Saved the Union.

Corey Robin,"Garbage and Gravitas," The Nation, 20 May, reviews Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made and Jennifer Burns's Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Paul Berman,"The Prisoner Intellectuals," The Book, 5 May, reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic.

Peter Stothard reviews David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama for the TLS, 19 May.

Finally, congratulations to Penn's Richard Beeman, whose Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution has won the George Washington Book Prize.