Feb 22, 2012

Modern History Notes

by Cliopatria

"A Most Welcome Development," Chris Bray, 21 February, and Ted Folkman, "Breaking: BC Appeals In The Belfast Project Case," Letters Blogatory, 21 February, have the latest on the legal issues in the Boston College/Irish Republican Army oral history controversy. See also: Peter Monaghan, "'Our Storehouse of Knowledge About Social Movements ... Is Going to Be Left Bare'," CHE, 19 February; and "Statement by the Council of the American Sociological Association on the Protection of Human Subjects from the Subpoena of Confidential Belfast Project Research Data," 21 February. Where is the AHA's statement?

Carnivalesque #82, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at M. H. Beals's Demography and the Imperial Public Sphere Before Victoria. Giants' Shoulders #44, a Grand Bazaar Edition of the history of science festival, is up at Thony C's Renaissance Mathematicus.

Thomas Wide reviews Kwasi Kwarteng's Ghosts of Empire: Britain's Legacies in the Modern World for the Daily Beast, 16 February.

Roger Moorhouse, "Germania: Hitler's Dream Capital," History Today, March, considers Albert Speer's dystopic vision for Berlin.

Jonathan Yardley for the Washington Post, 17 February, and Gerard Baker for the WSJ, 18 February, review Jean Edward Smith's Eisenhower in War and Peace. Mitch Smith, "'Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement'," IHE, 22 February, interviews Randal Jelks about his new biography of Mays.

Timothy Noah, "The Two Americas," TNR, 20 February, reviews Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Matthew Iglesias, "Krugman vs. Brooks," Slate, 17 February, reviews other reviewers. Demetria Gallegos, "Charles Murray Answers Questions on America's Growing Class Divide," WSJ, 4 February, is a transcript of readers' questions to Murray and his replies. Jennifer Schuessler, "A Lightning Rod in the Storm Over America's Class Divide," NYT, 5 February, is a feature sketch of Murray.

Finally, farewell to Ronald Fraser (Guardian, Post, NYTimes), a British oral historian of the Spanish civil war.