Things Noted Here & There
David A. Hollinger reviews Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America for the San Francisco Chronicle, 23 May. Hat tip
Alexandra Mullen for the Barnes & Noble Review, 22 April, and Brooke Allen,"Celebrity Jane," Wilson Quarterly, Spring, review Claire Harmon's Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World.
The Daily Beast's"11 Greatest Literary Feuds" includes some great ones, but they're almost exclusively 20th century.
Jack Shafer,"The Master of Debunk," Slate, 21 May, reviews W. Joseph Campbell's Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism.
David Oshinsky,"Temperance to Excess," NYT, 13 May, reviews Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.
Chris McGreal,"Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons," Guardian, 23 May, is a stunning story.
Elaine Showalter reviews Martin Stannard's Muriel Spark: The Biography for the Washington Post, 23 May. Charles McGrath,"Breathing Life into Henry Roth," NYT, 23 May, fills in the background to the publication of Roth's fifth novel, fifteen years after his death. Thomas Sugrue,"Stories and Legends," The Nation, 20 May, is adapted from Sugrue's new book, Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race.
Finally, farewell to Janine Denomme, who earned a doctorate in American Studies at Penn, but who believed that the priesthood was her vocation.