Thursday's Notes

Alexander Nazaryan, "Waterworld," The Book, 27 July, reviews John Mack's The Sea: A Cultural History.

Adam Kirsch, "Ideas Are Viruses: How Tacitus' Germania became the bible of German nationalism," Slate, 25 July, reviews Christopher Krebs's A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus's Germania From the Roman Empire to the Third Reich.

Philip Kennicott, "Smithsonian's ‘Great American Hall of Wonders' is a missed opportunity," Washington Post, 22 July, and Edward Rothstein, "The World as America Dreamed It," NYT, 27 July, review "The Great American Hall of Wonders," an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

Stanley Weintraub, "GBS and the despots," TLS, 27 July, tracks "George Bernard Shaw's descent from ‘textbook socialism' to blinkered admiration for Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini."

Ronald Fraser, "Oxford, Spain and the high life," TLS, 27 July, reviews María Jesús González's Raymond Carr: La curiosidad del zorro: Una biografía.

Robert Zaretsky, "Mind Games," Tablet, 27 July, sees the tradition of the French intellectual foundering on the discussion of the roles of Jews and Muslims in France.