Modern History Notes

Brian Doyle's"No," Kenyon Review, Spring, finds amusement in rejection letters. Tell me you never received one. Were you amused?

The Giant's Shoulders #3, the history of science carnival, is up at Entertaining Research.

Jill Lepore,"President Tom's Cabin," New Yorker, 22 September, reviews Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.

Richard Marggraf Turley,"Second Only to Byron," TLS, 3 September, explains"how Keats's most popular rival rescued him from the critics."

Gillian Sutherland,"The Nursing of Nightingale," TLS, 12 September, reviews Mark Bostridge's Florence Nightingale: The woman and her legend.

At Airminded, Brett Holman has been blogging the Sudeten Crisis of August-October 1938, day by day. He introduces the series here and it is indexed here.

Philip Terzian,"A Charm Brigade Raids Washington," WSJ, 11 September, reviews Jennet Conant's The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Washington, DC.

Anthony Lewis,"Official American Sadism," NYRB, 25 September, reviews Tom Lasseter's Guantanamo: Beyond the Law, Jonathan Mahler's The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power, and Physicians for Human Rights, Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact.