Things Noted Here & There

Caleb Crain, "On Not Letting Go," Paris Review Daily, 6 October: "Writing tries to fix the past—to hold it in place and sometimes in imagination to improve it."

Jerome Groopman, "The Body and Human Progress," NYRB, 27 October, reviews Robert Floud's, Robert W. Fogel's, Bernard Harris's, and Sok Chul Hong's The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World Since 1700.

Michiko Kakutani, "Gun Control and Gun Rights Stay Fighting Words," NYT, 9 October, reviews Adam Winkler's Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.

On Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs: Ken Auletta, "The Wizard of Apple," New Yorker, 24 August; Vaclav Smil, "Why Jobs Is No Edison," The American, 30 September; and Randall Stross, "The Wizard and the Mortal: Two Sides of Genius," NYT, 8 October. Whether Jobs is Edison's peer or not, Walter Isaacson's authorized biography, Steve Jobs, is already Amazon's #1 best seller, even before its release.

Richard Reeves reviews Jim Newton's Eisenhower: The White House Years for the LA Times, 9 October.

Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Lionel Trilling & the critical imagination," New Criterion, October, reviews Adam Kirsch's Why Trilling Matters.