Mary Beard, "Alexander: How Great?" NYRB, 27 October, reviews Pierre Briant's Alexander the Great and His Empire: A Short Introduction, trans. by Amélie Kuhrt, Philip Freeman's Alexander the Great, James Romm's Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire, Romm, ed., The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander, trans. by Pamela Mensch, and Ian Worthington's Philip II of Macedonia.

Yascha Mounk reviews David Gilmour's The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples for bookforum, 7 October.

Sholto Byrnes reviews Emma Christopher's A Merciless Place: The Lost Story of Britain's Convict Disaster in Africa for The National, 7 October.

Mike Dash, "In Search of Queen Victoria's Voice," Past Imperfect, 6 October, tracks the recording of the queen's voice.

Richard J. Evans, "Adolph & Eva," National Interest, Sept/Oct, reviews Heike B. Görtemaker's Eva Braun: Life with Hitler, trans. by Damion Searls.

Michael Kimmage, "Purity and Danger," The Book, 10 October, reviews Jonathan Herzog's The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America's Religious Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War.

Daniel Luban, "Kristol Palace," n+1, 6 October, reviews Benjamin Balint's Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left into the Neoconservative Right, Irving Kristol's The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009, and Justin Vaïsse's Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement.

Jill Lepore, "Wall Street Protests: cash-roots," New Yorker, 6 October: "to be a historian is to know that no one can understand the present until it's past."