Sunday's Notes

The current issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas features conversations about history and ethical judgments. In George Cotkin's"History's Moral Turn," our colleague, Rachel Leow, finds Cotkin misrepresenting Richard Evans' argument about historians' judgments of guilt or innocense. Accurate representation of another historian's position, with which one may disagree, should be one ethical attitude about which there is no dispute.

Steve Coates,"A Long, Strange Trip," NYT, 22 August, reviews Edith Hall's The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer's Odyssey.

Miranda Seymour,"Emily's Tryst," NYT, 22 August, reviews Brenda Wineapple's White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Jonathan Meades,"Modernist Master," New Statesman, 21 August, reviews Editors of Phaidon's Le Corbusier Le Grand.

Paul Berman,"Mailer's Great American Meltdown," NYT, 22 August, sees in Norman Mailer's ‘great American meltdown' of 1968 the themes that follow us into the present moment. See also: The Editors,"Up Front – Talking with Paul Berman," NYT, 22 August.

Max Rodenbeck,"War and Peace," NYT, 22 August, reviews Kenneth M. Pollack's A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East.