Thursday's Notes

Adam Kirsch, "The Dawn of Politics," City Journal, Spring, reviews Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution.

Alan Wolfe, "The Power Lover," The Book, 13 July, reviews Miles J. Unger's Machiavelli: A Biography.

Mark Adams, "Questioning the Inca Paradox," Slate, 12 July, looks at whether the Inca were the only major Bronze Age civilization that did not develop a written language.

peacay, "Native Americans," BibliOdyssey, 5 July, is a selection of depictions of native Americans by European and Euro-American artists. You can browse a larger selection of similar illustrations at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Kathryn Hadley, "Alarming increase in wars," History Today: The Blog, 12 July, summarizes the argument of Warwick's Mark Harrison and Humboldt's Nickolaus Wolfe that, between 1870 and 2001, wars increased because increasingly we could afford them. Their paper will appear in the Economic History Review.

Janet Maslin, "Supposition as Research: A Sort-of-True Story About NASA and a Thief," NYT, 13 July, reviews Ben Mezrich's Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History. Maybe not.

Finally, farewell to Theodore Roszak, a distinguished twentieth century historian and novelist, who taught at Cal State, East Bay, and to Cornell's Morton Sosna, an American historian and administrator, who taught and served at institutions from George Mason University to Stanford.