Ernest Davis, "Information, from drums to Wikipedia," TLS, 17 August, reviews James Gleick's The Information: A history, a theory, a flood.

Patricia Cohen, "As the Gavels Fell: 240 Years at Old Bailey," NYT, 17 August, features "The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913." It is the latest of Cohen's series on the digital humanities. Dan Cohen, Tim Hitchcock, and Bill Turkel discuss the importance of the Old Bailey project.

Robert Irwin, "Pulp orientalism," TLS, 18 August, reviews Reeva Spector Simon's Spies and Holy Wars: The Middle East in twentieth-century crime fiction.

The Smithsonian's Past Imperfect's team of nonacademic history bloggers, Karen Abbott, Mike Dash, and Gilbert King, is off to a terrific start. See, for example: King's "Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the Wizard of Schenectady," Past Imperfect, 16 August, which profiles the brilliant crippled friend of Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Nikola Tesla; and Dash's "One Man Against Tyranny," PI, 18 August, which features Georg Elser, who executed one of the less well known plots to kill Adolf Hitler.

Michael Kimmage, "The Interstitials," The Book, 17 August, reviews Robert Vanderlan's Intellectuals Incorporated: Politics, Art and Ideas inside Henry Luce's Media Empire.

Julian Borger and Georgina Smith, "Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down," Guardian, 17 August, looks at newly recovered evidence about the death of the UN's Secretary General.

Thomas Powers, "Too Fast," LRB, 25 August, reviews Manning Marable's Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.

Judith Shulevitz, "Lamarck's Revenge," The Book, 18 August, reviews Richard Francis's Epigenetics: The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance; and Peter Forbes for the Guardian, 19 August, reviews Nessa Carey's The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance.