More Noted Things

Steve Weinberg,"Biography, the Bastard Child of Academe," CHE, 9 May, argues for broader acceptance of biography as a discipline and offers a brief list of books for an introductory course. Currently, biography is occasionally studied as history or as literature. In Scott McLemee's"Becoming Richard Rorty," IHE, 7 May, Neil Gross makes a case for biography as sociology.

Jill Lepore,"Our Own Devices," New Yorker, 12 May, reviews Robert Freidel's A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millenium and Maury Klein's The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America.

Piers Brendon,"In Praise of Pacifism," Guardian, 3 May, reviews Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, The End of Civilization.

Ross Douthat,"E Pluribus Nixon," Atlantic Monthly, May, reviews Rick Perlstein's Nixonland.

Michiko Kakutani,"A Challenge for the U.S.: Sun Rising on the East," NYT, 6 May, reviews Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World.