Michael Dirda,"Giving new voice to Leopardi's songs of love and longing," Washington Post, 16 December, and Peter Campion,"The Solitary Life," NYT, 17 December, review Giacomo Leopardi's Canti, translated and annotated by Jonathan Galassi.

Andrea Wulf,"The Patriarch," NYT, 17 December, reviews Virginia Scharff's The Women Jefferson Loved; and Jill Lepore,"Paul Revere's Ride Against Slavery," NYT, 18 December, argues that Longfellow's poem was more about the American Civil War than its Revolution.

Claude R. Marx,"The men who ruled on FDR's Supreme Court," Boston Globe, 16 December, reviews Noah Feldman's Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices.