The Historical Society meets at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, 5-7 June. The theme of this year's conference:"Migration, Diaspora, Ethnicity, & Nationalism in History." About a third of the conference papers are now available online. Hat tip.

Robert Irwin,"Edward Said's shadowy legacy," TLS, 7 May, reviews Daniel Martin Varisco's Reading Orientalism: Said and the unsaid and Ibn Warraq's Defending the West: A critique of Edward Said's Orientalism. Relatedly,"The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting," a Tate Britain exhibit of responses of British artists to the cultures and landscapes of the Near and Middle East between 1780 and 1930, opens on 4 June and runs throughout the summer.

Christopher Turner,"Vasectomania, and Other Cures for Sloth," Cabinet, Spring, looks at 19th & 20th promises to create a more industrious you.

Ken McGoogin,"Mordecai Richler was here," Globe and Mail, 3 May, reviews Reinhold Kramer's Mordecai Richler: Leaving St. Urbain.

Dominic Sandbrook,"Busting the Myth," Literary Review, nd, reviews Gerard De Groot's The 60s Unplugged: A Kaleidoscopic History of a Disorderly Decade.

Timothy Garton Ash,"This tale of two revolutions and two anniversaries may yet have a twist," Guardian, 8 May, revisits 1968 and 1989. Hat tip.

Manan Ahmed - 5/10/2008

So, the guy who just wrote a whole book bashing Edward Said was called upon to review two more whole books that bash Edward Said - and he finds them quite necessary!

So hip.