Things Noted Here and There

Simon Winchester,"Lands of Erotic Fantasy and Their Complex Reality," NYT, 7 June, reviews Richard Bernstein's The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters.

Mike Jay,"The day pain died," Boston Globe, 7 June, perpetuates a Yankee myth about the first use of an anaesthetic in surgery. Boston, tip your hat to Georgia's Crawford Long.

Jody Rosen,"The Oldest Oldie, Revisited," Brow Beat, 4 June, brings us up to date on the findings of audio historians David Giovannoni and Patrick Feaster about the oldest recordings of the human voice. You can hear all of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograms on Giovannoni's and Feaster's website.

Jonathan Yardley,"Weeding Out the Weak," Washington Post, 7 June, reviews Vincent J. Cannato's American Passage: The History of Ellis Island.

Anne Applebaum,"Now We Know," TNR, 17 June, reviews Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev.