Peter Schjeldahl,"Reformers: The complex world of Lucas Cranach the Elder," New Yorker, 17 December, reviews"Lucas Cranach the Elder," an exhibit recently opened at Frankfurt's Städel Museum and which will open in the Spring at London's Royal Academy. The New Yorker also features"Human Nature," a Cranach slide show.

Roy Foster,"Partnership of Loss," LRB, 13 December, reviews Roy Foster's Ireland: The Politics of Enmity, 1789-2006.

Michiko Kakutani,"As a Nation Was Born, They Wrote and Wrote," NYT, 11 December, reviews Margaret A. Hogan and C. James Taylor, eds., My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams.

George Saunders,"Soviet Deadpan," NYT, 9 December, reviews Matvei Yankelevich, trans./ed., Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms. Kharms was a Soviet-era surrealist, absurdist poet, and dramatist, who starved to death in a hospital psychiatric ward during the siege of Leningrad.