Robert Darnton,"Singing in the streets of 18th-century Paris," Guardian, 4 December,"uncovers the 'Affair of the Fourteen'."

At Crooked Timber, John Holbo draws attention to the Library of Congress's recent acquisition of 700 tintypes and ambrotypes of American Civil War soldiers. They are posted online and will be featured in a Library of Congress exhibit,"The Last Full Measure," 12 April 2011 through 13 August 2011.

Piers Brenden reviews David Olusoga's and Casper W. Erichsen's The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism.

Mary Dudziak,"How to Remember Pearl Harbor," Balkinization, 6 December, points to new ways of remembering Pearl Harbor.

According to 3 Quarks Daily's Robert P. Baird, our colleague,

Aaron Bady won the internet last week with his explication of a pair of essays Julian Assange wrote in 2006. Paddling against a vomit-tide of epithets and empty speculations that threatened to bury Assange under a flood of banalities, Bady proposed and executed a fairly shocking procedure: he sat down and read ten pages of what Assange had actually written about the motivations and strategy behind Wikileaks.

Meanwhile, last week the Office of Career Services at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs advised its students to shun all public reference to the Wikileaks documents if they hope to have a future in public affairs. Yesterday, the School's Dean, John H. Coatsworth, a former President of the American Historical Association, reversed the advice.

Update: Assange has been arrested by London police on a Swedish warrant.

Alfred W. McCoy,"The Decline and Fall of the American Empire: Four Scenarios for the End of the American Century by 2025," Huffington Post, 6 December, sees economic decline, oil shock, military misadventure, and World War III as potential causes.

Chris Bray - 12/7/2010

...for Aaron Bady's perfectly done essay on Julian Assange, who just became my very favorite living person. What a pleasure to read.