Sunday Notes
James V. Grimaldi and Jacqueline Trescott,"Indian Museum Director Spent Lavishly on Travel," Washington Post, 28 December, continues the reporters' coverage of financial scandal at the Smithsonian. The whole series is here.
Cathryn Keller,"'Exploring the Early Americas': A Sense of Continent's Direction," Washington Post, 26 December, reviews a Library of Congress exhibit that includes Martin Waldseemueller's 1507 world map on which the western continents were first called America.
Michael Dirda,"Artistic rebels and psychological explorers in music, art and literature," Washington Post, 23 December, and Lee Siegel,"The Blush of the New," NYT, 30 December, review Peter Gay's Modernism: The Lure of Heresy From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond.
Jeremy McCarter,"One-Hit Wonder," NYT, 30 December, reviews Andrew Lycett's The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley, eds., Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters.
Domique Browning,"The Kitchen God's Life," NYT, 30 December, reviews Steven Gdula's The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home.
Paul Hockenos,"Left Behind: Romanticizing Germany's Red Guerillas," Boston Review, November/December, looks back at West Germany's Red Army Faction (RAF), the Baader-Meinhoff Gang. Hat tip.
Andrew Sullivan nominates our colleague, Daniel Larison, as a weekly columnist at the New York Times.
Finally, farewell to John A. Garraty (1920-2007). At POTUS, Alonzo Hamby has a reminiscence of his Columbia University mentor. Garraty was one of the most prolific historians of his generation.