Some Additionally Noted Things
Cursivity: Margaret Webb Pressler,"The Handwriting Is on the Wall," Washington Post, 11 October, on the decline of cursive writing, caused considerable discussion on the net. Josh Marshall tries to put it in historical perspective. Reading a much older generation's cursive can be torturous. Just ask Sharon Howard or Rebecca Goetz.
Free Speech: Todd Gitlin,"Outrage on the Defamation Front," Tapped, 10 October, condemns the Anti-Defamation League's intervention to deny Tony Judt a platform at the Polish Consulate. This debate of 28 September on"The Israeli Lobby: Does It Have Too Much Influence on American Foreign Policy?" features Shlomo Ben-Ami, Martin Indyk, Tony Judt, Rashid Khalidi, John Mearshimer, and Dennis Ross. Thanks to Eric Alterman for the tips.
Prizes: Finalists for the National Book Awards have been announced. The Nonfiction list: Taylor Branch, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone; Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl; Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present; and Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. It looks like academic historians were completely shut out of the list this year.
Tyrannies: At Chapati Mystery, lapata takes note of the many ways in which Dictators are"just like US."