Thursday's Notes

Send condolences to Rutgers' Richard L. McCormick. When he retires from its presidency to its history department in June 2012, he'll take a salary cut from $550,000 to $335,000 a year. Despite a losing record, the football coach will still be making what McCormick recommended: over $2,000,000 a year.

Nina C. Ayoub, "What's Interesting about Boredom," CHE, 29 May, reviews Peter Toohey's Boredom: A Lively History.

David Hawkes, "Winners, losers - and revenge," TLS, 25 May, reviews Linda Woodbridge's English Revenge Drama: Money, resistance, equality.

Robert Gordon, "To Hell and Back," Literary Review, June, reviews A. N. Wilson's Dante in Love.

Jesse Sheidlower, "Noah Webster, Founding Father," NYT, 27 May, reviews Joshua Kendall's The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture.

Michael Dirda reviews Molly Peacock's The Paper Garden: An Artist (Begins Her Life's Work) at 72 for the Washington Post, 26 May.

Jane Ridley, "Paradise in Bedford," Literary Review, June, reviews Jane Shaw's Octavia, Daughter of God: The Story of a Female Messiah and her Followers.

Dominic Sandbrook, "Journeymen," The Book, 1 June, reviews Patrick Wright's Passport to Peking: A Very British Mission to Mao's China.

James Mann, "Chinese Dreams," Slate, 30 May, and Jonathan Mirsky, "What Henry Saw," Literary Review, June, review Henry Kissinger's On China.