Modern History Notes

Brenda Wineapple, "John Brown's Folly: The mythology of a madman," American Scholar, Autumn, reviews Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War. Beverly Gage, "Lessons for Occupy Wall Street," Slate, 2 November, draws on her book, The Day Wall Street Exploded, to urge the relevance of the great railroad strike of 1877.

István Deák, "The Hater," The Book, 3 November, reviews Robert Gerwarth's Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich.

Alan Jenkins, "‘How I dislike that play now . . .'," TLS, 2 November, reviews George Craig, Martha Dow Fesenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck, eds., The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Vol. II, 1941-1956; and Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters. Theodore Dalrymple, "Knowledge Without Knowledge," New English Review, November, reassesses the work of Isaac Deutscher: "the scholar who knew a lot and understood little (including, or especially, himself). A man may smile and smile and be a villain. A man may read and read, and experience and experience, and understand nothing."

William Benton, "Elizabeth Bishop: Exchanging Hats – in pictures," Guardian, 3 November, is a slide show of the poet's paintings. Evan Hughes, "The Cordial Enmity Of Joan Didion And Pauline Kael," The Awl, 31 October, "resurrects the highbrow gossip of yore."