Things Ancient & Modern

August 2011 Biblical Studies Carnival is up at Daniel O. McClellan's site.

Andrea Wulf, "Which Way to the Garden of Eden?" NYT, 5 August, and Jennie Erin Smith, "Back to the Beginning," WSJ, 6 August, review Brook Wilensky-Lanford's Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden.

A. S. Ragnarök: the doom of the gods," Guardian, 5 August, is excerpted from Byatt's Ragnarok: The End of the Gods.

Randall Stephens, "Life and Debt in the United States," THS Blog, 1 August, looks at times when the US defaulted on its national debt.

Joseph C. Goulden, "Our chief rival in intelligence wars," Washington Times, 7 June; John Pomfret for the Washington Post, 24 June; and Tara McKelvey, "Our Spy War with China," NYT, 5 August, review David Wise's Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War with China.

Roger Lowenstein, "The Nixon Shock," Business Week, 4 August, looks at the effect of Richard Nixon's decision to stop backing the dollar with gold.