Things Noted Here and There

At Easily Distracted, Tim Burke questions the palaeontologists' reasoning about human ancestry from recent fossil discoveries. See also the discussion at PZ Myers,"Two new Homo Fossils," Pharyngula, 9 August.

Nathanael Philbrick,"God Bless Amerigo," NYT, 12 August, reviews Felipe Fernández-Armesto's Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America.

At Positive Liberty, Jason Kuznicki is underwhelmed by Nicholas Wade's preview of Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms (NYT, 7 August). Didn't we already learn much of what's there from Fernand Braudel and the Annales school? Hasn't Clark's data been accumulating for a century or more? Isn't his argument from genetics obviously wrong? Has the journalist misunderstood the book's argument or is much of the book's argument a bit of horse pucky?

Jon Meacham,"Faint Echoes," Washington Post, 12 August, reviews John Ferling's Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence.

Richard Brookheiser,"Land Grab," NYT, 12 August, reviews Richard Kluger's Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea. Brookheiser is surprisingly scornful of Kluger's prose. It's won both a Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards for earlier books. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.

Simon Sebag Montefiore,"Killers with Ideologies," Washington Post, 12 August, reviews Robert Gellately's Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe.