Christine Kenneally,"A Dolphin or a Lonely Transvestite?" Slate, 13 October, reviews Henry Hitchings' The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English and a clutch of this year's other books on our mother tongue.

Peter Schjeldahl,"Dutch Master," New Yorker, 27 October, reviews Edward Dolnick's The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century and Jonathan Lopez's The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren. Hat tip.

On the BBC, 18 October, Eric Hobsbawm argues that a free market has created the conditions of an enormous instability. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.

David S. Tanenhaus,"Barack, Bill and Me," Slate, 10 October, explains how the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, legal historian and editor of the Law and History Review, met and worked with Chicago's controversial education professor, William Ayers. Subsequently, Tanenhaus appeared on"The O'Reilly Factor" to defend his association with Ayers:

Hat tip.

Paul Berman,"Bill Ayers Fan Club," The Daily Beast, 15 October, has some hard words of reply to Ayers and his supporters. Berman concludes:"... if Obama loses, one of the reasons will be your moronic and dishonest refusal to draw a distinction between the democratic ideals of the left, and terrorist notions of totalitarian communism."