Thursday's Notes

The NYT's"10 Best Books of 2008" includes: Julian Barnes's Nothing To Be Frightened Of, Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic Of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Dexter Filkins's The Forever War, Patrick French's The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul, and Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.

Katherine A. Powers,"Pedestrian pursuits," Boston Globe, 30 November, reviews Geoff Nicholson's The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism.

Ingrid D. Rowland,"Mysteries of Siena," NYRB, 18 December, reviews"Renaissance Siena: Art for a City," an exhibit at London's National Gallery.

Alan Helms,"Gargantuan," Boston Globe, 30 November, reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography and Jeffrey Meyers's Samuel Johnson: The Struggle.

Saul Austerlitz,"How blue can you get?" Boston Globe, 30 November, reviews Ted Gioia's Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music.

Carlo Wolff,"Charting the wrath toward Grapes," Boston Globe, 30 November, reviews Rick Wartzman's Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Joseph Rosenbloom,"The Other Battlefield," Boston Globe, 30 November, reviews Thomas J. Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North.

Deborah Eisenberg,"Becoming Susan Sontag," NYRB, 18 December, reviews David Reiff, ed., Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947–1963.

Jon Ward,"Fox's Wallace defends Bush at screening," Washington Times, 2 December, and Mark Hemingway,"Chris Wallace at Frost/Nixon," The Corner, 3 December, report on a heated exchange between Fox News commentator Chris Wallace and historian Robert Dallek over analogies between Richard Nixon and George W. Bush about presidential abuse of power.