Links & Reviews

- In the Edmonton Journal, an important op/ed by Daniel Paul O'Donnell about the role of humanities in the new digital economy.

- Mike Widener reports that you can now watch a 20-minute tour of the Yale Law School library's rare books collection. Very cool!

- In the BBC News magazine, a profile of diarist Samuel Pepys. I'm still reading his daily entries, 350 years on (one each day). They're great fun.

- Be sure to check out the new 18thConnect site, and read more about the idea here. And, more on the digital humanities front, there's a good story in IHE about recent Google grants for the digital humanities project. More on one of those (very interesting) grants here.

- Abstracts for the upcoming SHARP conference in Helsinki are now up here - boy do I wish I was going!

- Over at Fine Books Blog, Jonathan Shipley notes a new Chronicle Books production, The Art of McSweeney's.

- Some pretty nasty news out of India, where cricket star Sachin Tendulkar will publish a deluxe edition of his memoir, the Tendulkar Opus in which the signature page will be made of paper containing the cricketer's blood. The edition, of which just ten copies will be produced, will weigh in at more than 80 pounds, and will cost $75,000.

- That recent new Bellesilles contretemps has pretty much fallen apart, with both Bellesiles and the Chronicle blaming the student for passing along a false story: see the editor's note at the bottom of the story (here).

- The NYTimes' take on the breathless (and statistically-managed) announcement from Amazon this week about Kindle sales vs. hardcover sales.

- From the Independent, a good synopsis of the recent Kafka news and the continuing legal battle over certain of his papers.

- There's a Q&A with Eric Jay Dolin about his new book Fur, Fortune, and Empire in the Boston Globe.

- In the "Daily Beast," Daisy Hay writes about her experiences in researching and writing Young Romantics.

- New blog: Eius Liber, by a William & Mary grad student working on New England history.

- In the Guardian book blog, Steven Moore has a post on the novel's historical roots.

Reviews

- Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries; review by Virginia DeJohn Anderson in the NYTimes.

- Ruth Harris' Dreyfuss; review by Leo Damrosch in the NYTimes.

- Eric Jaffe's The King's Best Highway; review by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.