At the blog this week, don’t miss Professor Shane White on the classic musical and film “The Sting,” and the African American history of the confidence man. And in the third of our occasional podcast series, contributing writer John Handel hosts a roundtable discussion about the fascinating recent books on the history of quantification with Dan Bouk, William Beringer, and Jamie Pietruska.

quidor rip

John Quidor, “Rip van Winkle” (1839)


And from our editorial team this week:
Nuala
George Orwell. The Road to Wigan Pier. (Penguin  Classics)
Lewis H. Lapham. Due Process. (Lapham’s Quarterly)
Ashley Dawson. Extinction- A Radical Conservation. (OR Books)
Ann Vileisis. Are Tomatoes Natural? (University of Virginia Press)
Helen Anne Curry, Evolution made to order : plant breeding and technological innovation in twentieth-century America. (University of Chicago Press)
Antoinette J. Piaggio,Gernot Segelbacher, Philip J. Seddon,Luke Alphey,Elizabeth L. Bennett,Robert H. Carlson,Robert M. Friedman, Dona Kanavy, Ryan Phelan,Kent H. Redford,Marina Rosales, Lydia Slobodian,and Keith Wheeler.
Is It Time for Synthetic Biodiversity Conservation? (TREE)
 
Sarah:
Julie Belcove, “Growing Up In A Black-History Archive,” (New Yorker)
Samuel Moyn, “Economic Rights Are Human Rights,” (Foreign Policy Blog)
David Olusoga, “The Windrush story was not a rosy one even before the ship arrived,” (Guardian)
Ori Preuss, “No Need to Go to Paris Anymore: Brazilians visits to Buenos Aires around 1900,” (Global Urban History)
 
Derek
Campbell Robertson, “A Lynching Memorial Is Opening” (New York Times)
Wendy Brown and Jo Littler, “Where the fires are” (Eurozine)
Skye C Cleary and Massimo Pigliucci, “Human Nature Matters” (Aeon)
 
Kristin
Mike Dash, “The Demonization of Empress Wu” (Smithsonian)
Krista Langlois, “When Whales and Humans Talk” (Hakai)
Rekjong, “Does Sex Kill Language?” (Rekjong’s zam-bu-ling)