Notes Ancient & Modern

In Stacy Schiff,"Cleopatra's Guide to Good Governance," NYT, 4 December, her recent biographer offers advice from Cleopatra VII.

Caroline Weber,"Killing the Gods," NYT, 3 December, reviews Tom Payne's Fame: What the Classics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebrity.

Christopher Hitchens,"In Search of the Washington Novel," City Journal, Autumn, argues that democracy may be the reason there's no great Washington novel.

Stephan Wackwitz,"Save Benjamin from his fans!" signandsight, 10 November, distinguishes the elements of Walter Benjamin's work that are persistently germane from those that are not. Originally published in Die Welt.

Jonathan Yardley,"Bard of the upper crust," Washington Post, 3 December, reviews Louis Auchincloss's A Voice From Old New York: A Memoir of My Youth.

Dennis Drabelle,"With the New Deal in balance, four jurists jockeyed for position," Washington Post, 5 December, reviews Noah Feldman's Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices.

Eric Alterman,"Bush V. Gore's Disgrace Deepens," Daily Beast, 4 December, and Jeffrey Toobin,"Precedent and Prologue," New Yorker, 6 December, mark the 10th anniversary of Bush v Gore.

Adam Kirsch for the Barnes & Noble Review, 29 November, and Lise Funderburg for the NYT, 3 December, review Rebecca Solnit's Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas.