Carnivalesque LXXIV, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at Res Obscura.

Helen Castor, "The tale of the rose," TLS, 18 May, reviews Jennifer Potter's The Rose: A True History.

Angus Trumble, "The private lives of Caravaggio," TLS, 18 May, reviews Andrew Graham-Dixon's Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane and Michael Fried's The Moment of Caravaggio.

Johann Hari, "How Gays Helped Make and Remake America," Slate, 23 May, reviews Michael Bronski's A Queer History of the United States.

Janet Maslin, "The Parisian Experience of American Pioneers," NYT, 22 May, Bruce Watson for the San Francisco Chronicle, 22 May, and Max Byrd for the Barnes & Noble Review, 24 May, review David McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. McCullough, "The Scandal of Madame X," Daily Beast, 22 May, is an excerpt from the book.

Andrew Holgate reviews Orlando Figes's The Crimean War: A History for the Barnes & Noble Review, 9 May.

Steve Donoghue, "1861: Putting personalities to the men behind America's civil war," The National, 20 May, reviews Adam Goodheart's 1861: The Civil War Awakening.

Carlo Wolff, "A lot of material on post-WWII Germany," Boston Globe, 20 May, reviews Frederick Taylor's Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany.

Jonathan Spence, "Kissinger and China," NYRB, 9 June, reviews Henry Kissinger's On China.

Michiko Kakutani, "Where Dissidents Are the Prey, and Horror Is a Weapon," NYT, 23 May, reviews Peter Godwin's The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe.

Malise Ruthven, "Storm Over Syria," NYRB, 9 June, reviews Brooke Allen's The Other Side of the Mirror: An American Travels Through Syria.