Things Noted Here and There

Carla Power,"A Secret History," NY Times, looks at the remarkable project of Mohammad Akram Nadwi, who is documenting a 1400 year old tradition of authoritative teaching by Muslim women.

Ferdinand Mount,"The Vivid Dreams of Alexis de Tocqueville," TLS, 21 February, reviews Hugh Brogan's Alexis de Tocqueville: Prophet of Democracy in the Age of Revolution.

David Parlett,"Monopolizing History," The American Interest, March/April, reviews the history of Monopoly. Its origin among advocates of the"single-tax" interests me. My wife and I are not devout Georgists, but her grandmother grew up in Alabama's premier single-tax colony, Fairhope, and we later lived in Arden, Delaware, the single-tax colony mentioned in the article. We used to keep a bar of Fels Naptha soap and a set of Monopoly around the house as tokens of loyalty.

Chris Sprow,"The Great Unraveler," Chicago Sports Review, 20 February, features an interview with our colleague, KC Johnson. There's a picture and a caricature, as well.

Madeline M. G. Haas,"Social Science Profs Question Gen Ed," Harvard Crimson, 18 February, looks at historians' reservations about the new curricular proposal at the University.

Finally, farewell to Winthrop Jordan of Ol' Miss, who died on Friday. His first book, White Over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, 1550-1812, won the Society of American Historians' Parkman Prize, Columbia University's Bancroft Prize, Phi Beta Kappa's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, and the National Book Award for History and Biography. His more recent Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry Into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy also won a Bancroft Prize.