Modern History Notes

In Giles Coren to"Chaps", Guardian, 23 July, a London Times columnist speaks his mind to Times sub-editors who presumed to improve the text of his column. This isn't recommended behavior, though I did once borrow a line from the subject of my research, Vernon Johns, to tell an editor that he'd have"to get a ladder to climb up to hell." Forgers of historical documents are, I suppose, worse than bumbling editors. Thomas Mallon's"Forging On," NYT, 3 August, reviews Lee Israel's Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger. Israel succeeded in getting two of her forgeries into a recent critical edition of The Letters of Noël Coward.

Christopher Benfey,"Designing Dictators," NYT, 3 August, reviews Steven Heller's Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State.

James J. Sheehan,"All for the Führer," Washington Post, 3 August, reviews Ian Kershaw's Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution and Kevin P. Spicer's Hitler's Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism.

Nicholas Thompson,"Era With No Name," NYT, 3 August, reviews Derek Chollet's and James Goldgeier's America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11: The Misunderstood Years Between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Start of the War on Terror.

Alan Brinkley,"Black Sites," NYT, 3 August, reviews Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.