Tom Palaima reviews Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 for the THES, 5 February.

Jeffrey Meyers reviews Barbara Furlotti's and Guido Rebecchini's The Art and Architecture of Mantua: Eight Centuries of Patronage and Collecting (trans. by A. Lawrence Jenkins) for the THES, 5 February.

Lynn Hunt reviews Michael Sonenscher's Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution for the THES, 5 February.

Michael E. Ross,"The End of Black History Month," The Root, 3 February, argues that its rationale no longer holds. Brokey McPoverty's series,"Know Your History," PostBourgie, February, finds humor in it. Hat tip.

Roberta Smith,"Main Street Postcards as Muse," NYT, 5 February, reviews"Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard," an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Finally, farewell to Olga Raggio, a curator of early modern art at the Metropolitan, and to my friend, Robert T. Handy, Henry Sloane Coffin Professor Emeritus of Church History at New York's Union Theological Seminary.