Edward Glaeser,"The Urban Miracle," The Book, 20 November, reviews Stephen Puleo's A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900.

Jonathan Yardley,"Mr. Clemens, in his own words," Washington Post, 19 November, and Tim Adams for the Guardian, 21 November, review Harriet Elinor Smith, ed., Autobiography of Mark Twain, I.

John Adams,"The Zen of Silence," NYT, 19 November, reviews Kenneth Silverman's Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage; and Leon Wieseltier,"Saul Bellow's Quest for the Vernacular Sublime," NYT, 18 November, reviews Benjamin Taylor, ed., Saul Bellow: Letters.

Francine Prose,"An Affair to Remember," NYT, 19 November, reviews Antonia Fraser's Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter.

Finally, Ernest Herndon,"A new chapter: Cotton Gin to dedicate historical marker," McComb, Mississippi's Enterprise-Journal, 14 November, notes that Liberty, Mississippi, will now have a historical marker at the cotton gin where State Representative E. H. Hurst shot and killed civil rights activist Herbert Lee in 1961. The cotton gin is now owned by African Americans who have made it into a popular local restaurant and paid to have the marker in place.