More Modern Notes

Joanna Weiss,"Everyone in favor, say yargh!" Boston Globe, 11 May, previews Peter Leeson's The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, which will argue that 17th century pirates were pioneers of enlightened democracy.

Ruth Franklin,"After Empire," New Yorker, 26 May, looks back at Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

Jonathan Mahler,"More Glory: Talking Baseball, From the '50s and '60s," NYT, 21 May, reviews Fay Vincent's We Would Have Played for Nothing: Baseball Stars of the 1950s and 1960s Talk About the Game They Loved.

Errol Morris,"The Most Curious Thing," Zoom, 19 May, continues his interrogation of photographs from Abu Ghraib.

George Packer,"The Fall of Conservatism," New Yorker, 26 May, draws on Rick Perlstein's Nixonland and Sean Wilentz's The Age of Reagan to argue that"the party of ideas" has run out of them.