Matt Jensen,"Sin Happens," Books & Culture, July/August, reviews Alan Jacobs's Original Sin: A Cultural History. Alan blogs at The American Scene and keeps a commonplace book, more than 95 theses.

Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition has announced the finalists for the Tenth Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize. They are: Anthony E. Kaye's Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South, Kristin Mann's Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900, Chandra Manning's What this Cruel War was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War, and Stephanie E. Smallwood's Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora.

Alexander Nemser,"Low Truths," TNR, 30 July, reviews Donald Fanger, trans., Gorky's Tolstoy and Other Reminiscences: Key Writings By and About Maxim Gorky. Hat tip.

Daniel Stashower,"Master Swindler," Washington Post, 20 July, reviews Edward Dolnick's The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century.

Jennifer Schuessler,"A History of Abuse in the War on Terror," NYT, 22 July, reviews Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.