Midweek Notes

Ed Hooper,"The Demise of Military History," AJC, 1 November, revives the declension narrative. Mark Grimsley,"Hand Wringing for Military History," Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, 2 November, replies.

Deborah Friedell,"Anatomy of Melancholy," The Book, 2 November, reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography and Jeffrey Meyers's Samuel Johnson: The Struggle.

Jeremy Bernstein,"Chess & Sanskrit: Persian Jones in Old Calcutta," NYRBlog, 2 November, introduces William Jones, the father of historical linguistics.

Anthony Daniels,"A taste for wormwood & gall," New Criterion, November, explores"the masochism of John Stuart Mill."

Adam Kirsch,"Last Exit," Tablet, 2 November, reviews Gal Beckerman's When They Come For Us We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry. Benny Morris,"Qutb and the Jews," National Interest, Nov/Dec, reviews John Calvert's Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism.

Dwight Garner,"Engagements With History Punctuate a Lifetime in Books," NYT, 2 November, reviews Garry Wills's Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer.