Things Noted Here and There

Congratulations to the winners of this year's Bancroft Prize: Allan M. Brandt of the Harvard Medical School for The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America, Charles Postel of California State, Sacramento, for The Populist Vision, and Peter Silver of Princeton for Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America.

Jonathan Yardley reviews Gordon Wood's The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History for the Washington Post, 16 March.

Marianne Brace reviews Michael Burleigh's Blood & Rage: A cultural history of terrorism for the Independent, 16 March.

Valerie Grove reviews Nicola Tyrer's story of Great Britain's female veterans of World War II, Sisters in Arms: British Army Nurses Tell Their Story for the London Times, 14 March.

Geoff Boucher reviews David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America for the LA Times, 16 March. Hat tip.

Finally, a revised version of my"Jeremiah" appears in this morning's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, whose op-editor thought the word,"jeremiad," too difficult for the newspaper's readers (4 syllables, donchano). Beyond that, a roundup of commentary on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the tradition in which he speaks: Nichole Belle,"Remembering Another Jeremiah," Crooks and Liars, 16 March; Ed Blum's"‘God Damn America' in Black and White," HNN, 17 March; Kevin Levin's"Are Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Words Really Offensive?" Civil War Memory, 17 March; Andrew Sullivan's"The Forerunners of Wright," Daily Dish, 17 March; Ari Kelman's"Jeremiad," The Edge of the American West, 17 March, and thoughtful comments by David Carlton at The Edge.