Matthew Reisz,"'The book everyone wishes they'd written'," THES, 23 April, launches the periodical's series in which scholars name a work in their field that they most admire.

Alan Baumler,"Grading exams in Late Imperial China," Frog in a Well/China, 24 April, finds us doing it in another time and another place.

Tim Blanning,"Joseph Haydn and the German Nation," History Today, May, discusses the composer's cultural nationalism.

Paul Collins,"Online gaming the Victorian way," New Scientist, 17 April, shows how chess at a distance led to the telegraph, answering a need felt since England's Henry I played France's Louis VI in 1119. Hat tip.

Frederic Raphael,"Douglas Fairbanks the fraud," TLS, 22 April, reviews Jeffrey Vance's Douglas Fairbanks.

Harvard Magazine, May/June, has two essays of interest to historians: Adam Kirsch's"Vistas of Perfection: The self-dissatisfied life and art of James Agee" and Anne Firor Scott's"Caroline Farrar Ware: Brief life of a multifaceted public citizen: 1899-1990."

Finally, the University of Kentucky's Ronald Eller stirred some critical reactions when he called for the abolition of coal mining bymountain top removal at a regional conference at Hazard, Kentucky. Hat tip.