Modern History Notes

U.S. Intellectual History sponsored the first annual American Intellectual History Conference at Grand Rapids, Michigan's Grand Valley State University on 17 and 18 October. The conference program is here; and the blog now features three retrospectives.

Lynda Pratt,"Who wrote the original Frankenstein?" TLS, 29 October, reviews Charles E. Robinson, ed., Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus: The original two-volume novel of 1816–1817 from the Bodleian Library Manuscripts by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (with Percy Bysshe Shelley).

Colm Tóibín,"I Could Sleep with All of Them," LRB, 6 November, reviews Andrea Weiss's In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story.

Patrick Wilcken,"The century of Claude Lévi-Strauss," TLS, 29 October, reviews Lévi-Strauss, Oeuvres, edited by Vincent Debaene, Frédéric Keck, Marie Manzé and Martin Rueff.

Dan Chiasson,"Works on Paper," New Yorker, 3 November, reviews Saskia Hamilton and Thomas Travisano, eds., Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Thomas Lowell.

Christopher Lydon's"A Longer View of 2008," Open Source, 29 October, features a half hour interview with Brown's Gordon Wood about the United States'"historic" national election. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.