Things Noted Here & There

Francine Prose, "Robert Hughes Tours Rome," NYT, 2 December, reviews Hughes's Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History. Géza Vermès, "Jews, Christians and Judaeo-Christians," Standpoint, December, traces the early history of Christian Jews or Jewish Christianity.

Christopher Benfey, "Revisiting Camelot," NYT, 2 December, reviews Peter Ackroyd's The Death of King Arthur: Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur". Alida Becker, "The Archaeologist as Titan," NYT, 2 December, reviews Ivor Noël Hume's Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate.

Brooke Allen, "Italy's Fragile Union," NYT, 2 December, reviews David Gilmour's The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples. Diana Preston reviews Tim Jeal's Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure for the Washington Post, 2 December. Thomas L. Jeffers reviews Rosamund Bartlett's Tolstoy: A Russian Life for the Washington Post, 2 December.

Richard J. Evans, "The Road to Slaughter," Tablet, 5 December, reviews Sean McMeekins's The Russian Origins of the First World War. Gerard DeGroot reviews Peter Englund's The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War for the Washington Post, 2 December. Holly Morris, "The Lure of Everest," NYT, 2 December, reviews Wade Davis's Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest.

Beverly Gage reviews Jim Newton's Eisenhower: The White House Years for the Washington Post, 2 December.

Nandini Ramachandran, "Frontiers of the Imagination," Sunday Guardian, 4 December, reviews Manan Ahmed's Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination.

Finally, farewell to the distinguished American labor historian, David Montgomery.