Arthur Lubow,"Bernini's Genius," Smithsonian, October, features the remarkable baroque architecture and sculpture of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Jenny Uglow,"Brave New World," Guardian, 11 October, reviews Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.

Jill Lepore,"Rock, Paper, Scissors," New Yorker, 13 October, is a fine essay on the American electoral system as a patchwork of adjustments:

That we grant our rulers the right to govern us is the genius of eighteenth-century republicanism. That we all can vote is a consequence of nineteenth-century politics. That we vote secretly is the Gilded Age's answer to universal manhood suffrage. How our votes are counted is, generally, a product of twentieth-century technology. ... It really is patches all the way down. In places—like the Electoral College—the patchwork gets pretty shoddy.
Still, a patch, even a patch upon a patch, isn't necessarily bad.

Richard Rayner,"The Truman Show," LA Times, 11 October, reviews Capote's Portraits and Observations -- The Essays of Truman Capote. Hat tip.