Friday's Notes

Jonathan Liu reviews Simon Price's and Peter Thonemann's The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine for the Barnes & Noble Review, 3 March. This is the first chronological volume in Penguin's new History of Europe series. See also earlier reviews by Tom Holland, Nick Rennison, Peter Jones, and Christopher Kelly.

Tony Mann reviews Robert Kaplan's and Ellen Kaplan's Hidden Harmonies: The Lives and Times of the Pythagorean Theorem for the THE, 3 March.

Lucy Wooding reviews Alexandra Walsham's The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland for the THE, 24 February.

Linda Colley reviews Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles: How the Loss of America Made the British Empire for the Guardian, 19 February.

Wendell Hassan Marsh,"The Untold Story of One of America's Largest Slave Revolts," The Root, 25 February, reviews Daniel Rasmussen's American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt. A Harvard undergraduate thesis becomes a book that challenges conventional readings of its subject.

Richard Bosworth reviews David Gilmour's The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions and Their Peoples for the THE, 3 March.

Ann Morrison,"Gauguin's Bid for Glory," Smithsonian, March, recalls the artist's self portrait.

Timothy Snyder,"Animal Nature," The Book, 3 March, reviews Slavenka Drakulic''s A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism: Fables from a Mouse, a Parrot, a Bear, a Cat, a Mole, a Pig, a Dog, and a Raven.

Barbara Spindell reviews Ben Shepherd's The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War for the Barnes & Noble Review, 28 February.

Evan Thomas,"Spymaster General," Vanity Fair, 3 March, looks at the life of the C.I.A.'s founder.

Ed Kilgore,"Chameleon," New Republic, 3 March, tells the story of the history professor who would be president.