Weak Endnotes

The Washington Post's"Ten Best Books of the Year" includes: Andrew X. Pham's The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars, Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, Fred Kaplan's Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, Michael Dobbs's One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khruschev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War, and Thomas Tavisano, ed., with Saskia Hamilton, Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Otherwise, consult: Jennifer Schuessler's"The Top Ten Top-Ten Lists," Paper Cuts, 5 December, and largehearted boy, who indiscriminately aggregates end-of-the-year best-book-lists -- everything from the Abilene Reporter-News's Best Texas Books to Wizard Magazine's Best Comics.

Roberta Smith,"Illuminating the Dark Ages," NYT, 4 December, reviews the Metropolitan Museum of Art's newly restored and reinstalled Gallery for Western European Medieval Art from 1050 to 1300 in Manhattan.

Barry Gewen,"When Languages Die," Paper Cuts, 3 December, draws on Peter K. Austin, ed., One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost. Who knew that the world's most concentrated linguistic diversity was in Vanuatu; that 96% of the world's population speaks only 4% of its 6,900 languages; and that 90% of those languages are probably fated to die out in this century? See also:"A-Z of English words with surprising origins," Telegraph, 26 November, which draws on Henry Hitchings's The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English.

Henry A. Kissinger,"Team of Heavyweights," Washington Post, 5 December, praises President-elect Obama's national security team, even though its composition defies some conventional wisdom.