Midweek Notes

Jonathan Haslam reviews Michael Bentley's The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield for the Guardian, 15 July.

Andrew Anthony, "One Big Yawn: boredom is not just a state of mind," Guardian, 17 July, reviews Peter Toohey's Boredom: A Lively History.

Courtney Humphries, "A Whiff of History," Boston Globe, 17 July, visits the historians' discussions of histories of the senses.

Adam Goodheart, "The Strange Career of Uncle Tom," Slate, 18 July, reviews David S. Reynolds' Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America.

Stefan Beck, "At Grandpa Twain's knee," New Criterion, June, reviews Harriet Elinor Smith, et al., eds., The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume I.

Laura Miller for Salon, 17 July, Dwight Garner, "The Lure of Cocaine, Once Hailed as Cure-All," NYT, 19 July, and Tess Taylor for bookforum, 19 July, review Howard Markel's Anatomy of an Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine.

Eve Gerber interviews "Eric Foner on the Evolution of Liberalism," The Browser, 17 July, for his choice of five crucial books on modern American liberalism.

Jed Perl, "Bullshit Heaven," The Book, 14 July, reviews Alexis L. Boylan, ed., Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall. You have to ask why Duke University Press would waste its resources on a subject like Kinkade.