D. J. Taylor, "Mean Streets," The Book, 2 January, reviews John Marriott's Beyond the Tower: A History of East London.

James Kindall, "At Times, the History Is in the Margins," NYT, reviews "John Adams Unbound," an exhibit at the Sachem Public Library in Holbrooke, New York. Zoltan Haraszti's John Adams and the Prophets of Progress (1952) was the first major study of Adams's marginalia.

Christopher Benfey, "The Far-Apart Artists," NYRB, 12 January, reviews Sarah Greenough, ed., My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, Volume I, 1915–1933; "Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe," an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan; Barbara Haskell, ed., Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction; and Katherine Hoffman, Alfred Stieglitz: A Legacy of Light.

Finally, farewell to Emmett L. Bennett, Jr., a distinguished classicist who played a major role in the decipherment of Linear B.