More Noted Things

Kathryn Hughes,"Plague Ahoy," Guardian, 25 October, reviews Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the 14th Century.

Richard Dorment for the Telegraph, 10 September, and Michael Kimmelman,"In a Faceoff, the Masters Trump Picasso," NYT, 27 October, review"Picasso and the Masters," an exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris.

Andrew Motion,"Impressions of rapture," Guardian, 25 October, reviews Jackie Wullschlager's Chagall: Life, Art, Exile.

Sam Anderson,"Five Lives," NY Magazine, 26 October, reviews Edmund White's Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel, Laura Claridge's Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners, Steven Watts's Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, Philip Norman's John Lennon: The Life, and Eminem's The Way I Am.

Bruce Falconer,"The Torture Colony," American Scholar, Autumn, tells the story of a utopian colony, founded in rural Chile by a German evangelical, that cooperated with Pinochet's torture regime. Hat tip.

Finally, from friends of Cliopatria and the department at UC, Berkeley, come two poignant notes:

At 96, Kenneth Stampp, has survived a series of heart attacks and strokes. Nonetheless, he's looking forward to witnessing the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

At 55, Jon Gjerde, a leading historian of American immigration and dean of the University's College of Letters & Science, has died unexpectedly. He was, says a former student,"one of the nicest, humblest, and smartest people I've ever met and it's a terrible loss to Berkeley's History Department ... and the broader community of historians."