More Noted Things

During March, four of our colleagues are conducting roundtable discussions of Judith Bennett's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. The first round is up at The Adventures of Notorious Ph.D., Girl Scholar. Subsequent discussions will be at: Historiann on 9 March; Tenured Radical on 16 March; Blogenspiel on 23 March; and somewhere, with an unnamed special guest, on 30 March.

Blake Gopnik,"At Freer, Aesthetic Is Simply Smashing," Washington Post, 3 March, reviews"Golden Seams: The Japanese Art of Mending Ceramics," an exhibit at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery in Washington. When has a repair enhanced the aesthetic appeal of an artifact? When the Japanese did it.

John Summers,"Gettysburg Regress," TNR, 18 March, wonders whether the National Park Service's efforts to restore the Gettysburg battlefield to conditions in 1863 are helpful. They've cut down trees that weren't there then. Will they strew dead bodies across the fields? Hat tip.

Charles McGrath,"The First Suburbanite," NYT, 27 February, wonders whether a biography and new editions of his work will secure John Cheever's place among important 20th century American authors.

Evan R. Goldstein,"Rashid Khalidi's Balancing Act," CHE, 6 March, explores the controversial professor's struggle to balance scholarship and advocacy. Thanks to CHE for the free link for non-subscribers.

The LA Times has announced the finalists for its 2008 book prizes.

Biography: H. W. Brands's A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ernest Freeberg's Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War and the Right to Dissent, Paula J. Giddings's Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, Jon Meacham's American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, and Jackie Wullschlager's Chagall: A Biography

Current Interest: Steve Coll's The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, Dexter Filkins's The Forever War, Barton Gellman's Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, and Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey.

History: Michael Dobbs's One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War, Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, Thomas J. Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North, and Rick Wartzman's Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.