Links & Reviews

Short one this week; I'm sure I missed some things in being away for a few days, so I'll catch them for the next round.

- Word this week that a tiny clay fragment from the 14th-century BCE was discovered in Jerusalem. It's the oldest written document ever found in the city.

- From Religion Dispatches, notes on the "hypertextuality" of medieval manuscripts.

- I really loved an entry in Ralph Luker's "Mid-Week Notes" this week: "Last week the Library of Congress announced that its technicians had discovered that Thomas Jefferson had changed the word 'subject' to 'citizen' in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence. It failed to note that Julian P. Boyd had pointed that out in his edition of the Thomas Jefferson Papers many years ago. See footnote #10."

Reviews

- Marla Miller's Betsy Ross and the Making of America; review by Siobhan Conaty in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

- Sally Gunning's The Rebellion of Jane Clarke; review by Clare Clark in the WaPo.

- Nicholas Carr's The Shallows and William Powers' Hamlet's Blackberry; review by Jennifer Howard in the WaPo. This is a must-read. The latter is also reviewed by Laurie Winer in the NYTimes.