More Noted Things

Tulane's James Hood has a Princeton doctorate in modern European history. He published promising articles in the Journal of Modern European History and Past & Present in the 1970s and was tenured on the promise of a book. But, then, nothing. On the testimony of his students, tenure was a mistake and, without it, he would have been fired. Hood is retired now, but according to federal investigators, his larcenous self may belong behind bars.

Garry Wills's "Superficial & Sublime," NYRB, 7 April, a scornful review of Hubert Dreyfus's and Sean Dorrance Kelly's All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, prompts an exchange between Dreyfus/Kelly and Wills, NYRB, 26 May.

Annalena McAfee, "Women on the Front Line," Guardian, 16 April, looks at the remarkable female war correspondents before World War II.

Richard Byrne, "The Morning After," The Book, 4 May, reviews Anna Porter's The Ghosts of Europe: Central Europe's Past and Uncertain Future.

Jackson Lears, "Same Old New Atheism: On Sam Harris," Nation, 16 May, reviews Harris's The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.

Stacy Schiff, "Dreams of his Mother," Daily Beast, 3 May, and Ian Buruma, "A Free Spirit," NYRB, 26 May, review Janny Scott's A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother.

Abbey Francis, "The History of the ‘Tenured Radical'," Wesleyan Argus, 3 May, features our colleague, Claire Potter.