Modern History Notes

Edward Rothstein,"Tales of Lives Richly Lived, but True?" NYT, 21 January, reviews"The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives," an exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan.

Evan Thomas,"For sovereignty, of course. But for honor most of all.," Washington Post, 23 January, reviews Stephen Budiansky's Perilous Fight: America's Intrepid War With Britain on the High Seas, 1812-1815.

Duncan Geere,"How the first cable was laid across the Atlantic," Wired.co.uk, 18 January, re-examines the first successful laying of a trans-Atlantic cable.

Kevin Levin,"Teaching Civil War History 2.0," Disunion, 21 January, confronts the myth of the Black Confederate.

Frank Thadeusz,"The Original Sherlock Holmes: How a French Doctor Helped Create Forensic Science," Der Spiegel, 21 January, reviews Douglas Starr's The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science.

John Banville,"Franz Kafka's Other Trial," Guardian, 14 January, looks at the biographical background to The Trial.

Jonathan Yardley,"A quick peek behind China's wall," Washington Post, 23 January, reviews Patrick Wright's Passport to Peking: A Very British Mission to Mao's China.

Louis Menand,"Books as Bombs," New Yorker, 24 January, Elaine Showalter,"Did feminism need 'The Feminine Mystique'?" Washington Post, 23 January, and Rebecca Traister,"Mad Women," NYT, 20 January, review Stephanie Coontz's A Strange Stirring:"The Feminine Mystique" and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s. See also:"Puncturing Betty Friedan, but Not the Mystique: An Interview with Stephanie Coontz," HNN, 24 January.