Wednesday Notes

Kathryn Hughes,"The death of life writing," Guardian, 28 June, sees a problem in current biography -- like, the field's at a dead end. The NYT's Jennifer Schuessler is skeptical.

Adam Kirsch,"Cloudy Trophies," New Yorker, 7 July, reviews Stanley Plumley's Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography; and Kirsch,"Thomas Jefferson, Gentleman Scholar," NY Sun, 2 July, reviews Kevin Hayes's The Road to Monticello. Hat tip.

Matt Weiland,"What's in a Name?" Slate, 30 June, reviews George Rippey Stewart's Names on the Land, a 1945 book about the naming of American places. Weiland ranks it with other"broad-minded and big-hearted works of American culture from the first half of the 20th century:" H.L. Mencken's American Language, John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy, the Federal Writers' Project American Guide series, and Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. Names on the Land is being re-issued by the NYRB Classics series.

Gulag History: Many Days, Many Lives, a project of George Mason University's Center for History and New Media in conjunction with scholars in Russia, presents"the lives of people who went through the system of Soviet labor camps in the years 1917-1988." Hat tip.

Andrew Bacevich,"What Bush hath wrought," Boston Globe, 1 July. Matt Yglesias calls Bacevich's op-ed"brilliant." Kevin Drum says it's not so much brilliant as it is self-evidently true.