Things Noted Here & There

Peter Behrens,"The Appeal of the Spud," Washington Post, 31 May, reviews John Reader's Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent.

Jonathan Yardley,"Celebrating Quiet Heroism," Washington Post, 31 May, reviews Edmund S. Morgan's American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America.

Caroline Weber,"Lightning Rods and Sideshows," NYT, 29 May, reviews Jill Jonnes's Eiffel's Tower: And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count and James H. S. McGregor's Paris from the Ground Up.

Whether you participated in The Long Civil Rights Movement Conference: Histories, Politics, Memories at UNC, Chapel Hill, on 2-4 April or not, you may want to view videos of its panels.

David Greenberg,"The Cold War Duel That Never Dies," Washington Post, 31 May, reviews Susan Jacoby's Alger Hiss and the Battle for History.

Francis Wheen,"Life on Mars," Literary Review, May, reviews Andy Beckett's When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies.