Sunday Notes

Ian Tyrrell,"What is transnational history?" Ian Tyrrell, nd, is an excerpt from the Australian historian's paper at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociale, Paris, in January 2007. Hat tip.

M. F. Burnyeat,"The philosophy of physiognomy," TLS, 14 May, reviews Simon Swain, ed., Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon's"Physiognomy" from classical antiquity to medieval Islam. Hat tip.

The Washington Post's Book World, 18 May, features reviews of three books about the capital's history: Jonathan Yardley reviews Fergus M. Bordewich's Washington: The Making of the American Capital, David Greenberg's"Tribe of Scribes" reviews Robert Schlesinger's White House Ghosts: Presidents and their Speechwriters, and Ted Widmer's"Kennedy's Voice," reviews Ted Sorensen's Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History.

Jack Rosenthal,"Profile in Courage," NYT, 18 May, reviews Sorenson's Counselor; and Douglas Brinkley,"The Long Shadow," NYT, 18 May, reviews Sean Wilentz's The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008.

Jim Newton reviews Rick Perlstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America for the LATimes, 18 May.

Finally, at Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, Mark Grimsley notes that, entering its 8th decade, the Munich analogy is"the most overworked historical analogy of the 20th century" and Brett Holman says that we need a variant of Godwin's Law dealing with it.