Weak Endnotes

Michael Bérubé, "At Penn State, a Bitter Reckoning," NYT, 17 November, is consistent with the University Faculty Senate's call for an investigating committee controlled by people without ties to the University.

In 1775, Samuel Johnson asked: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?" Julie Flavell, "What Dr. Johnson Knew," Yale Press Log, 16 November, offers a tour of 18th century Fleet Street, whose American side featured both the drivers and the driven. Flavell is the author of When London Was Capital of America.

Kathryn Harrison, "Empress of All the Russias," NYT, 16 November, and Kathy Lally for the Washington Post, 18 November, review Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman.

For the Washington Post, 18 November, Philip Kennicott reviews "Unbuilt Washington," an exhibit at the city's National Building Museum. Don't miss the slide shows: examiner, Huffington Post, Washington Post. Marc Fisher reviews John DeFerrari's Lost Washington, D.C. for the Washington Post, 18 November.

Coel Hellier, "Nazi racial ideology was religious, creationist and opposed to Darwinism," coelsblog, 8 November, is the argument of an atheist. Hellier either ignores or is ignorant of Ernst H.P.A. Haeckel's influence on Nazi ideology.

William Hogeland, "MLK on How to Protest," Hysteriography, 17 November, argues that those who would Occupy Wall Street could benefit from a close reading of Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail."

Finally, congratulations to Harvard's Stephen Greenblatt, whose The Swerve: How the World Became Modern won the National Book Award, 2011, for Nonfiction.