More Noted Things

Colin Thubron, "Apocalypse City," NYRB, 12 January, reviews Simon Sebag Montefiori's Jerusalem: The Biography.

"How Luther went viral: Five centuries before Facebook and the Arab spring, social media helped bring about the Reformation," Economist, 17 December, sees precedent for social change.

Mark Lilla, "Republicans for Revolution," NYRB, 12 January, reviews Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin.

Lyndall Gordon, Eva Hoffman, Calvin Trillin, Jennifer Steil, and William Fiennes recommend the "Best of FiveBooks on Memoirs," The Browser, 26 December. Michael Korda, "Beware Hollywood Memoirs: They're Dull and Overrated," Daily Beast, 27 December, draws on his experience as a publisher to argue that a Hollywood memoir is likely to disappoint.

John Gribbin, "How Physics Got Weird," WSJ, 24 December, reviews Stephen Hawking, ed., The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of, an anthology of the 20th century's major scientific papers that drove the revolution in quantum physics.

Patricia Cohen, "Bound for Local Glory at Last," NYT, 27 December, reports that Oklahoma is finally welcoming the archives of Woodie Guthrie.

At Chris Bray, our former colleague continues his series of posts about the Boston College/Irish Republican Army oral histories controversy. He outlines a convincing case that responsible authorities at Boston College must resign.

Timothy Snyder, "War No More: Why the World Has Become More Peaceful," Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2012, takes up a debate with Steven Pinker.