Wednesday's Notes

Things Past: There's a new, monthly history of science carnival, The Giant's Shoulders. Its first edition, The Giant's Shoulders #1, is up at A Blog Around the Clock.

Hugh Eakin's essay,"The Devastation of Iraq's Past," NYRB, 14 August, focuses on the war's damage to archaeological sites.

Kyle Stock,"Selling Slavery," Charleston Post and Courier, 27 July, reports on the South Carolina city's success in exploiting its slave-owning past in the tourist trade.

Eric Ormsby,"The Activist and the Recluse," NY Sun, 6 August, reviews Brenda Wineapple's White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Things Current: Scott McLemee,"It's All About the Oil," IHE, 6 August, reviews Judith Swadding's The Ancient Olympic Games.

Scroll across the toolbar of the NYT's"Map of Olympic Medals, 1896-2004" and you'll be impressed by the rise of east Asia's Olympic athletes. Africa, Latin America, and South Asia have yet to make their major mark.

Orville Schell,"China: Humiliation & the Olympics," NYRB, 14 August, reviews Xu Guoqi's Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895–2008, Daniel A. Bell's China's New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society, Peter Hays Gries's China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy, Minky Worden, ed., China's Great Leap: The Beijing Olympic Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges, and Chen Shi-Zheng's film, Dark Matter.

Nicholas Lemann,"Conflict of Interests," New Yorker, 11 August, reviews Arthur Fisher Bentley's The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures and Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule.

Things Future: Conrad Black,"The Shape of Things to Come," NY Sun, 4 August, reviews Robert Kagan's The Return of History and the End of Dreams.