Sunday's Notes

Allister Heath,"Survival of the Fittest," Literary Review, November, reviews Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.

Richard B. Woodward,"The Melancholy Easel," NYT, 7 November, reviews Jed Perl's Antoine's Alphabet: Watteau and His World.

Terry Eagleton,"Palace of Pain ...," Guardian, 8 November, reviews Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War.

Alan Wolfe's"Uncommon Ground," NYT, 7 November, reviews Thomas Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.

Mark Lilla,"The Perils of ‘Populist Chic'," WSJ, 8 November, mourns the death of a conservative intellectual tradition in the United States.

Robert Dallek,"Barack Obama will never become one of America's forgotten presidents," Telegraph, 8 November, wagers that,"like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F.Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan - the most memorable of the 18 presidents who served in the last century - Obama seems likely to become an unforgettable personality who presided over a transforming administration." Hat tip