Friday's Notes

Peter Brooks,"Our Universities: How Bad? How Good?" NYRB, 24 March, reviews Richard Arum's and Josipa Roksa's Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, Andrew Hacker's and Claudia Dreifus's Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—And What We Can Do About It, Mark C. Taylor's Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities, and Martha C. Nussbaum's Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities.

Errol Morris,"The Ashtray," Opinionator, 10 March, is a five-part series on the author's thinking about the work of his one-time advisor at Princeton, Thomas Kuhn. Morris is a winner of the Cliopatria Award for Best Series of Posts.

Clive Wilmer,"What is the history of English poetry?" TLS, 9 March, reviews Michael O'Neill, ed., The Cambridge History of English Poetry.

Witold Rybczynski,"How To Save Dying Cities," Slate, 9 March, reviews Edward Glaeser's Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier.

"Mapping the History of Science Fiction: The Big Picture".

Adam Kirsch,"The Temple Mount in New York," Tablet, 9 March, reviews Michael Weingrad's American Hebrew Literature: Writing Jewish National Identity in the United States.

Christopher Benfey,"Torrid Life, Transcendent Art," Slate, 9 March reviews Meryle Secrest's Modigliani: A Life.

Louis Menand,"Wild Thing," New Yorker, 14 March, reviews Douglas Waller's Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage.

Alan Wolfe,"The Big Shrink," The Book, 10 March, reviews Daniel T. Rogers's The Age of Fracture.