400 Years of Milton; 200 of Lincoln

Frank Kermode,"Heroic Milton: Happy Birthday," NYRB, 26 February, reviews Gordon Campbell's and Thomas N. Corns's John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought, Anna Beer's Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot, and Nigel Smith's Is Milton Better Than Shakespeare?.

Fred Kaplan,"The Lincoln Canon," Washington Post, 8 February, William Safire,"Lincoln Monuments," NYT, 6 February, and Allen Barra,"Yet more books to mark Lincoln's big day," San Francisco Chronicle, 8 February, make recommendations from among the outpouring of work about A. Lincoln. David W. Blight,"Abe the Intellectual," Washington Post, 8 February, reviews Ronald C. White Jr.'s A. Lincoln: A Biography; and Elaine Showalter,"On Her Own," Washington Post, 8 February, reviews Catherine Clinton's Mrs. Lincoln: A Life.

Otherwise, Jane Stancill,"UNC warns of class and job cuts," Raleigh News & Observer, 7 February, says that an anticipated 7% reduction in state support of the University of North Carolina system would mean the loss of 660 faculty positions, 232 of them at UNC, Chapel Hill, alone.