Carnivalesque XLV, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Cranky Professor.

David Oshinsky,"Disaster Reel," NYT, 23 November, reviews Howard Blum's American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, Movie-Making, and the Crime of the Century.

James Sturcke,"The influenza pandemic of 1918," Guardian, 12 November, is an interactive review of the pandemic's impact. Hat tip.

Charles Isherwood,"Father of the ‘Follies'," NYT, 23 November, reviews Ethan Mordden's Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business.

Liesl Schillinger,"A Fever in the Blood," NYT, 23 November, reviews Owen Matthews's Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love, War, and Survival.

Philip Kennicott,"Modernism's Monster," Washington Post, 23 November, reviews Nicholas Fox Weber's Le Corbusier: A Life.

Michael Dirda reviews The Journal of Helene Berr, a diary of a Holocaust victim, for the Washington Post, 23 November.

Jonathan Yardley reviews Sinatra in Hollywood for the Washington Post, 23 November.

George Packer,"A Life Split in Two," NYT, 23 November, reviews Patrick French's The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul.