Sunday Notes
"The Eyes Have It," Curious Expeditions, 9 February, surveys the ubiquity of the evil eye in world cultures. Thanks to Rob MacDougall for the tip.
If you do research, you know the glory of WorldCat. Not in WorldCat is a new blog devoted to books"and book-like things" on the market that are so rare, unusual, obscure or bizarre that they are not known to have been catalogued anywhere in the world's libraries.
Bob Thompson,"Challenging History," Washington Post, 7 February, profiles Harvard's Drew Gilpin Faust and her new book, This Republic of Suffering.
In Hank Steuver's"Wasn't It Great?" Washington Post, 10 February, Trinity, San Antonio's Char Miller, SUNY, Buffalo's Bruce Jackson, and Georgetown's Joseph A. McCartin reflect on the challenge of teaching college students about the Great Depression. Steuver teaches me why there's a big ball of rubber bands in my refrigerator, a drawer full of used twisties in the kitchen, and a whole shelf of old spaghetti sauce jars nearby; and why my daughter thinks that's odd.
At Deal ‘M' for Musicology, Phil Ford's"Dad," 4 February, and"Literary History," 5 February, Ford is browsing in a bookstore. There, he learns about his late father from Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye in the Fiction section, Nathalie Cooke's new biography of Atwood in Non-Fiction, and a volume of Atwood's verse in Poetry.
Finally, if it's Alexander Hamilton in his tennies and on his cellphone, it must be Drunk History. Plus, there's intercourse with Ben Franklin! Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.