Clayton Cramer's on the warpath again. Fifteen American historians (Jack N. Rakove, Saul Cornell, David T. Konig, William J. Novak, Lois G. Schwoerer, Fred Anderson, Carol Berkin, Paul Finkelman, R. Don Higginbotham, Stanley N. Katz, Pauline R. Maier, Peter S. Onuf, Robert E. Shalhope, John Shy, and Alan Taylor) have filed an amicus brief in District of Columbia, et al v. Dick Anthony Heller, in which the District is appealing a circuit court ruling that struck down its highly restrictive gun-control law. The historians' brief supports the District's claims against an individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment. Clayton wants you to send him references to every instance of the 15 historians' having been taken in by Michael Bellesiles's Arming America. Clayton's going to have a really hard time embarrassing some of those historians (Pauline Maier, for example) on that issue.

Christopher Phelps,"The Prophet Reconsidered," CHE, 18 January (free link to non-subscribers), reviews Clayborne Carson, et al., eds., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume VI: Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948-March 1963, Thomas F. Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice, and Michael K. Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign.

On identity politics and presidential politics, see both KC Johnson's close questioning of David Greenberg's"Why Obamamania?" Washington Post, 13 January, and Tenured Radical's thoughtful challenge to Mark Leibovitch's"Rights vs. Rights: An Improbable Collision Course," NY Times, 13 January.