Modern History Notes

If you are unable to attend the AHA convention, you can follow it, in part, at AHA Today and Historianstv.com.

Sanford Schwartz,"American Parable," NYRB, 15 January, reviews"Thomas Chambers: American Marine and Landscape Painter, 1808–1869," an exhibit currently on tour in Philadelphia, New York, and Bloomington.

Esther Schor,"Emily Dickinson and other hummingbirds," TLS, 31 December, reviews Brenda Wineapple's White Heat: The friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Christopher Benfey's A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, art, and scandal in the intersecting worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade.

Jeffrey Herf,"Unpleasant Truths," TNR, 30 December, reviews the German feature film, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex.

Charles McGrath,"Still Paging Mr. Salinger," NYT, 30 December, revisits J. D. Salinger's mystique on the reclusive writer's 90th birthday.

"North Country Blues," The Celestial Monochord, 31 December, takes a look at the ethnic folk music of the upper midwest that Bob Dylan turned his back on and we thus know little about. Hat tip.

Neve Gordon and Jeff Halper,"Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?" CHE, 30 December, asks an urgent question. It isn't just that we've been on vacation.