May 21, 2011

Weak Endnotes

by Cliopatria

Ben Breen's Res Obscura will present Carnivalesque LXXIV, an early modern edition of the festival, on Tuesday 24 May. Use the form to nominate the best in early modern history blogging since 26 March. Military History Carnival #27 will be here at Cliopatria on Friday 27 May. By 24 May, use the form to nominate the best of military history blogging since late February.

John Noble Wilford, "The Muslim Art of Science," NYT, 20 May, reviews Jim al-Khalili's The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance.

In "The Rosslyn Code," Slate associate editor Chris Wilson pursues a 500 year old mystery in the Scottish chapel Dan Brown made the setting for his less plausible "Da Vinci Code." See: Part I: A Series of Cubes, Part II: The Stone Angels, Part III: A Hidden Melody, Part IV: The Scottish Da Vinci, and Part V: Is It Real or Fake. See also: "Archive for the ‘Rosslyn Chapel' Category," BS Historian, 28 May 2007-2 November 2010.

Robert Zaretsky, "Montaigne, a man for all seasons," Le Monde diplomatique/Eng, May, reviews Sarah Bakewell's How to Live: or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.

J. H. Elliott, "The Very Violent Road to America," NYRB, 9 June, reviews Daniel K. Richter's Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts. Mary Beth Norton, "Finding More Founders," NYT, 20 May, reviews Alfred F. Young, Gary B. Nash and Ray Raphael, eds., Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation.