During March, Another Damned Medievalist, Historiann, Notorious PhD, Tenured Radical and an unnamed invited guest will hold a book event on Judith Bennett's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. ADM has the schedule.

Thomas Hayden,"Darwin the Liberator," Washington Post, 15 February, reviews Adrian Desmond's and James Moore's Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution and Jerry A. Coyne's Why Evolution is True.

Roberta Smith,"So Typecast You Could Scream," NYT, 12 February, reviews"Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety and Myth," an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Alexander Provan,"An Alienation Artist: Kafka and His Critics," The Nation, 11 February, reviews Stanley Corngold, Jack Greenberg and Benno Wagner, eds., Franz Kafka: The Office Writings and Louis Begley's The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka, A Biographical Essay.

Joseph Epstein,"A Yiddish Novel With Tolstoyan Sweep," WSJ, 13 February, revisits Israel Joshua Singer's classic 1936 novel, The Brothers Ashkenazi.

Jonathan Yardley reviews David Kushner's Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb for the Washington Post, 15 February.

Auburn's Wayne Flynt, is spearheading an effort to overturn Alabama's sadly dysfunctional state constitution. Adopted in 1901 to secure the disfranchisement of black and poor white voters, it is used to legislate local issues, has been amended over 700 times, and is now longer than both the Bible and Moby Dick. Flynt has filed a lawsuit, issued a statement, and can be heard here on NPR.

Farewell to Alison L. Des Forges, a historian, human rights activist, and MacArthur Fellow, lost in the airplane crash near Buffalo, New York. Our condolences go out to her family and, especially, her husband, Roger V. Des Forges, a historian of China who teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo.