20th Century Notes

Annie Murphy Paul,"Fetal Monitors," Slate, 27 December, reviews Sarah Dubow's Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America.

David Kaufmann,"Gathering Storm," Tablet, 28 December, reviews Uwe Steiner's Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to His Work and Thought, translated by Michael Winkler.

The NYT's David Brooks gives his Sidney Awards for 2010 to two historical essays:

Anne Applebaum's"The Worst of the Madness," NYRB, 11 November, which reviewed Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and Norman M. Naimark's Stalin's Genocides; and

Adam Gopnik's"Finest Hours: The Making of Winston Churchill," New Yorker, 30 August, which reviewed Churchill's Churchill by Himself: The Life, Times and Opinions of Winston Churchill in His Own Words , Sir Max Hastings's Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945, Richard Holmes's Churchill's Bunker: The Cabinet War Rooms and the Culture of Secrecy in Wartime London, and Paul Johnson's Churchill.

Vox Tablet,"Monumental Embrace," Tablet, 27 December, features the controversy over Berlin's memorial to gay victims in Nazi concentration camps.

Michael Sean Winters,"Churchman and Statesman," The Book, 27 December, reviews Raymond Schroth's Bob Drinan: The Controversial Life of the First Catholic Priest Elected to Congress.

David Stelfox, A History of Violence," The National, 24 December, reviews Sean Birchall's Beating the Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action.

Finally, farewell to Dennis Dutton, the father of Arts & Letters Daily, and to E. Gene Smith, who built the largest collection of Tibetan Buddhist texts to survive outside of Tibet.