Thursday Notes

P. Z. Myers,"A Brief History of Disbelief," Pharyngula, 25 April, reports that, in early May, PBS will show a three-part BBC production on the development of modern atheism.

Salil Tripathi,"The Lives of Saints," New Statesman, 23 April, argues that, while Gandhi is idealized in the West, he is remembered in Indian culture as a more complicated figure. Hat tip.

Nicholas Lemann,"Tune in Yesterday," New Yorker, 30 April, reviews James L. Baughman's Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948-1961.

Jack Shafer,"David Halberstam (1934-2007): Portrait of the Prize-Winning Reporter as an Engorged Ego," Slate, 24 April, speaks ill of the dead, but Shafer's onto something. Halberstam's book on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, The Children, was a bloated, self-indulgent recall of his youth, wholly innocent of archival research.