Midweek Notes

History Carnival XCIX is up at Andrewdevenney.net!

Anthony Grafton and James Grossman, "The Wrong Way to Lower College Costs," NYRBlog, 31 May, takes on Richard Vedder, et al., and the Center for College Affordability's "25 Ways to Reduce the Cost of College." Louis Menand, "Live and Learn: Why We Have College," New Yorker, 6 June, reviews Professor X's In the Basement of the Ivory Tower Confessions of an Accidental Academic and Richard Arum's and Josipa Roksa's Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.

Charles C. Mann, "Göbekli Tepe: The Birth of Religion," National Geographic, June, rethinks the origins of civilization.

Adam Kirsch, "Frenemies," Tablet, 31 May, reviews Adam Sutcliffe and Jonathan Karp, eds., Philosemitism in History.

Henry Allen, "An Inexplicable Gift for Fame," WSJ, 28 May, reviews Michael Wallis's David Crockett: The Lion of the West.

David Blight, "Forgetting Why We Remember," NYT, 29 May, brilliantly recalls the first memorial day in Charleston, South Carolina.

Dwight Garner, "A Lifetime of Anxiety and Lust," NYT, 25 May, reviews Richard M. Cook, ed., Alfred Kazin's Journals.

Manan Ahmed, "Ways of Seeing: Pakistan's paradox of knowledge and denial," The Caravan, 1 June, is a foretaste of his new book, Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination.