On Election Day, Maine voters (of which I am one) did something extraordinary. In record numbers for an off-year election, hundreds of thousands of us went to the polls and stripped from some of our fellow citizens the right to marry. Read More...

Louis Menand, "The Ph. D. Problem," Harvard Magazine, November/December, argues for a change in the professionalization of academic people. Jenna Weissman Joselit, "Founding Father," Tablet, 5 November, reviews Bruce Feiler's America's Prophet: Moses...

The Historical Society's Historically Speaking has become the most vital historical newsletter in the United States. Currently, its series of symposia on the state of traditional fields of history considers Intellectual History and Military History....

Cato Unbound, November, features a symposium on "How the World Got Modern." Stephen Davies's "How the World Got Modern" is its lead essay. Jack Goldstone, Anthony Pagden, and Jason Kuznicki will each publish a reply to Davies this week. Dwight...

Jill Lepore, "Rap Sheet," New Yorker, 2 November, reviews Randolph Roth's American Homicide and Pieter Spierenburg's A History of Murder: Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present. See also: Lepore, "Foul Play," ibid. Peter...