Modern History Notes

Chris Bray, "The Whole Story Behind the Boston College Subpoenas," CHE, 5 July, summarizes the argument against federal intervention to seize the oral history evidence.

Louis P. Masur, "Harriet Beecher Stowe's Powerful Mosaic of Facts," CHE, 3 July, reviews David S. Reynolds's Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America. Gary W. Gallagher reviews Amanda Foreman's A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War for the Washington Post, 1 July.

Peter Sekerin, "Memories of Chekhov," NYRB, 5 July, features selections from Sekerin's new biography of Chekhov. It is composed of excerpts of primary sources that appear here for the first time in English. Scott McLemee, "The Re-Assassination of Leon Trotsky," IHE, 8 July, examines Bertrand M. Patenaude's review of Robert Service's Trotsky: A Life in the current AHR. Service's editors at Harvard University Press have apparently gone underground.

Frances Stonor Saunders reviews Jane Shaw's Octavia, Daughter of God for the Guardian, 30 June.

Deborah Blum, "Death in the Pot," Lapham's Quarterly, 5 July, looks at the history leading to federal authority to regulate food. Eric A. Posner, "Shooting It Out," The Book, 6 July, reviews Adam Winkler's Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.

Fatima Bhutto, "Pakistan v. Pakistan: On Anatol Lieven," Nation, 28 June, reviews Anatol Lieven's Pakistan: A Hard Country.

Finally, congratulations to Frank Dikötter, whose Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, a "stunningly original and hugely important" work, has won the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction; and farewell to Robert Sklar, a distinguished historian of American film.