Some More Noted Things

At Slate,"The Uninhibited Brush: A Thousand Years of Japanese Picture Books," 20 December.

George Packer,"Knowing the Enemy: Can social scientists redefine the ‘war on terror'?" New Yorker, 12 December, is a fascinating account of one effort to redefine strategies for counterinsurgencies. Thanks to Mark of ZenPundit for the tip.

"AHR Conversation: On Transnational History," AHR, December, is non-subscriber friendly and features a discussion among C. A. Bayly of Cambridge, Harvard's Sven Beckert, Columbia's Matthew Connelly, Witwatersrant's Isabel Hofmeyer, Oberlin's Wendy Kozol, and UC, Irvine's Patricia Seed.

The NY Times reports that hundreds of millions of documents, many of them long secret FBI files, will be declassified as of 1 January. Relatedly, congratulations to Jon Wiener, who has finally won a 25 year-long battle for the release of the FBI files on John Lennon. The LA Times has the fullest account of the long struggle. Jon's report on it is here and he posts the newly released documents here. Thanks to Mary Dudziak at Legal History Blog for the tip.