Randall Stephens at THS Blog has launched a series in which he interviews well-known historians about "Why I Became a Historian": Jack Rakove, David D. Hall, ...

Helen Castor, "A Stormin' Norman," Literary Review, October, reviews Tracy Borman's Matilda: Queen of the Conqueror.

John Sutherland, "A Tale of Two Dickens," Literary Review, October, reviews Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist and Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life.

Robert Krulwich, "Dissolve My Nobel Prize! Fast! (A True Story)," Krulwich Wonders, 3 October, tells the remarkable story of what happened to Nobel Prize medals in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen.

Vivian Gornick, "My Hungry Soul: Alfred Kazin's Raw Materials," Boston Review, Sept/Oct, reviews Richard M. Cook, ed., Alfred Kazin's Journals.

Seth Perry, "Scientology and Its Discontents," CHE, 2 October, reviews Janet Reitman's Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion and Hugh Urban's The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion.

"LSE produces new Twitter guide for academics," LSE, 3 October, announces the London School of Economic's adoption of helpful hints to the twitter-perplexed.