May 12, 2009

Modern History Notes

by Cliopatria

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom,"The Mythology of Blogs: A Top Ten List for the Uninitiated Historian," Perspectives on History, May, identifies some that are news to me.

Michael Kazin,"Ruthless in Manhattan," NYT, 7 May, reviews T. J. Stiles's The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Robert McCrum,"The masterpiece that killed George Orwell," Guardian, 10 May, describes the conditions under which Orwell wrote 1984.

Stephen Cox,"Finding Atlas," American Conservative, 4 May, argues that, before Ayn Rand, there was Isabel Patterson.

Jordan Davis,"Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis's Narnia," Nation, 6 May, reviews Laura Miller's The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia.

Laura Shapiro,"Helen Gurley Brown's Sexy Mistake," Slate, 11 May, reviews Jennifer Scanlon's new biography of Brown, Bad Girls Go Everywhere.

More Comments:

Jeremy Young - 5/13/2009

I wondered about that Wasserstrom piece. When looking for people to write about blogging, why don't editors ever ask "real" bloggers -- those who invest a lot of time and effort into the blogosphere, read and comment on other people's blogs, etc.? The China Beat isn't that kind of blog, and its authors aren't that kind of bloggers. I'd think you, for instance, would have been a much better choice to write that article.