Thursday Notes
Matthew McGowan,"The Rise of Books on the Fall," University Bookman, Winter, reviews Bryan Ward-Perkins' The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization and Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians.
Caroline Elkins,"The Gates of Hell," NY Times, 20 May, reviews William St. Clair's The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Jonathan Kirsch's review of Ehrhard Bahr's Weimar on the Pacific, LA Times, 20 May, and Lisa Jardine's"The Intellectual Ties That Bind," BBC News, 18 May, consider the fate of Euro-American intellectual relations at mid-twentieth century.
Judith H. Dobrzynski,"Our Official History Scold," Opinion Journal, 22 May, looks at the National Endowment for the Humanities' Bruce Cole's point of view.
Finally, historical figures, including George Armstrong Custer (looking rather more sad-assed than dashing), Thomas Jonathan"Stonewall" Jackson, and James McCune Smith (intellectual leader of New York's African American community from 1840 to 1865), are now posting at Myspace.