Friday's Notes

Timothy Larsen,"Why We Said No," IHE, 16 February, explains why you were not hired despite your superlative qualifications. Larsen is a historian who holds an endowed chair in biblical and theological studies at evangelical Wheaton College. He makes no reference to the statement of belief to which faculty members must adhere nor to the experience of his former colleague, Joshua Hochschild, who was fired five years ago for converting to Roman Catholicism. Wheaton's clearly within its legal rights, Tim, but that could have something to do with"why we said no."

Michael Dirda,"Old English poetry isn't lost in translation," Washington Post, 17 February, reviews Greg Delanty and Michael Matto, eds., The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation.

Takeshi Inomata,"Excavating the Origins of Maya Civilization," Scientist at Work, 17 February, reports on ongoing work in western Guatemala.

Andrzej Stasiuk,"The Gold Harvest," Salon), 11 February, considers Polish reaction, even before it is published, to The Gold Harvest by Princeton's Jan Tomasz Gross. It follows his controversial books, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland and Fear - Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz. This preview, translated by Julia Sherwood, is from a Slovak history blog.