Elaine Showalter,"Is Jacko Our Wilde," Los Angeles Times, 12 June, draws a parallel between Michael Jackson's trial and that of Oscar Wilde in 1895. In"Not So Wilde," at Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee says – er – probably not. Wilde's trial featured an intelligent discussion of art, democracy, and morality.

David Brooks,"Joe Strauss to Joe Six-Pack," New York Times, 16 June, is in defense, even admiration, of middlebrow culture in the years after World War II. I'm inclined to agree with him. At Liberty & Power, Aeon Skoble pushes the argument even further.

History Carnival #10 at Spinning Clio still offers huge reading fare, but if you're not surfing the history bloggers for accounts of their experience abroad this summer, you should be. The [non]Zombie is doing research at the British Library in London. Nathanael Robinson's travel diary, Reise-Krise, reproduces remarkably beautiful photographs taken in Alsace. David Noon at Axis of Evel Knieval takes a break from blogging for a Mediterranean cruise with his mother-in-law. No kidding. Sort of breaks your heart, doesn't it? At Munnin, K. M. Lawson learns some history in conversations with local people in Korea. Brian Ulrich takes a bus trip to the oases of western Egypt and finds that there is remarkably little there.

Brian Ulrich - 6/18/2005

Nothing there but great deserts and interesting people, that is!