Sunday Notes

History Carnival LXI is up at Histori i Media. In a festival first, History Carnival is hosted at a blog that is primarily in Polish. For those of us who are Polish-challenged, the Carnival is posted in English. Enjoy the festivities!

Michael Dirda reviews Charles Nicholl's The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street for the Washington Post, 3 February.

To promote the Landfill Prize for the most useless inventions, John Naish launches the nominations with"Top Ten Useless Inventions," Times OnLine, 28 January. Hat tip.

Henry Petroski,"Telephone Tag," Washington Post, 3 February, reviews Seth Shulman's The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret.

Philip Lopate,"Coming to America," NYT, 3 February, reviews Joseph Horowitz's Artists in Exile: How Refugees From Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts.