Friday's Notes

Peter Gwin,"Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara," National Geographic, September, discusses a recently discovered burial site in Niger's desolate Sahara. In addition to potsherds and animal skeletons, it included skeletal remains of both Kiffian people from 6000 to 8000 BCE and Tenerian people from 4500 to 2500 BCE. See also: David Brown,"Excavations Show a Lush Life in the Sahara," Washington Post, 15 August.

Samanthi Dissanayake,"All because the lady loves a foreign accent," BBC News Magazine, 14 August, looks at the romance novels of Great Britain's Mills and Boon publishing house. After 100 years, fainting native women still fall for exotic foreign men. Thanks to our exotic colleague, Manan Ahmed, for the tip.

Anne Applebaum,"When China Starved," Washington Post, 12 August, foreshadows Yang Jisheng's yet untranslated two volume work on China's Great Famine, Tombstone.

Barry Gewen,"The '60s: Once Upon an Optimistic Time," NYT, 12 August, reviews G. Calvin Mackenzie's and Robert Weisbrot's The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s.

Edward Luttwak,"A Truman for Our Time," Prospect, August. This is red meat. Hat tip.