Sunday's Notes

We're celebrating Carnivalesque's sixth anniversary with its 66th festival, an early modern edition, which is up at Early Modern Notes. Sharon Howard has outdone herself!

Michael Korda,"The World's Greatest Actress," Daily Beast, 25 September, and Graham Robb,"The Divine Sarah," NYRB, 14 October, review Robert Gottlieb's Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt.

Max Hastings,"The Hard Truth about the Foreign Legion," NYRB, 14 October, reviews Adrian D. Gilbert's Voices of the Foreign Legion: The History of the World's Most Famous Fighting Corps and Martin Windrow's Our Friends Beneath the Sands: The Foreign Legion in France's Colonial Conquests, 1870–1935.

Jonathan Gornall reviews Jonathan Schneer's The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict for The National, 24 September.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft,"Eleven Days That Shook the World," The Book, 23 September, reviews Richard Overy's 1939: Countdown to War.

Rupert Wilkinson,"'The Lonely Crowd,' at 60, Is Still Timely," CHE, 12 September, celebrates the 60th anniversary of the classic.

Jeffrey Gettleman,"The Pirates are Winning!" NYRB, 14 October, reviews Gerald Hanley's Warriors: Life and Death Among the Somalis and Martin N. Murphy's Somalia: The New Barbary? Piracy and Islam in the Horn of Africa.