Modern History Notes

Wikileaks' drop of 92,000 classified documents over the weekend challenged official western interpretations of the war in Afghanistan. If they are more than you can read, see the Guardian, NYT, Der Spiegel or Washington Post. A first interpretation: Andrew J. Bacevich,"Leakistan: The New Insurgency," TNR, 25 July.

Jerome Charyn reviews Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds for the Washington Post, 25 July.

David Greenberg,"The Do-Gooder," The Book, 26 July, reviews John Milton Cooper's Woodrow Wilson: A Biography.

Patricia Cohen,"Sexual Outlaw on the Gay Frontier," NYT, 25 July, reviews Justin Spring's Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade.

Deborah Lipstadt reviews Guy Walters's Hunting Evil: The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped and the Quest to Bring Them to Justice for the Washington Post, 25 July.

Jörg Magenau,"Blindly working through the past," signandsight, 12 July, reviews Christa Wolf's novel Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud. The biographer of an east German novelist who collaborated with the Stasi reviews her last novel.

Andrew Higgins for the Washington Post, 25 July, and Jeffrey Wasserstrom,"Will Communism Ever Fail in China?" Daily Beast, 23 July, review Richard McGregor's The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers.

Finally, farewell to modern American historian Ferenc Szasz of the University of New Mexico.