Tony Perrottet,"Make-Your-Own Condoms: A history of the rubber," Smart Set, 7 April, in case you were wondering. Hat tip.

Michael Caines,"The complaints of Laetitia Pilkington," TLS, 9 April, reviews Norma Clarke's Queen of the Wits: A Life of Laetitia Pilkington. Hat tip.

Amy Orndorff,"Re-Created Library Speaks Volumes About Jefferson," Washington Post, 11 April, reports on the effort to recreate Thomas Jefferson's library. It became the basis of the Library of Congress after the War of 1812 and was largely destroyed by fire in 1851. The recreation of Mr. Jefferson's library goes on public display at the LOC tomorrow.

Paul Theroux reviews Patrick French's The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul for the TLS, 6 April.

Finally, farewell to UCLA's Melissa Meyer. Professor Meyer was the author of The White Earth Tragedy: Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota Anishinaabe Reservation, 1889-1920 and Thicker Than Water: The Origins of Blood as Symbol ... and Ritual.

Tim Lacy - 4/11/2008

Ralph,

On what did the talk by Alan Kors miss? Well, just about everything! But it's a summation worthy of a tired Friday morning.

- TL