Reviewed Elsewhere

Contributing editors Michael Fassiotto, Corey Hollis, Gabriel Merle, Barbara Bennett Peterson, and Bronwen Solyom provided the excerpts for this issue.

Publications reviewed include Albion, The Historian, Journal of World History, Le Monde des Livres, Los Angeles Times Book Review (LATBR), The New Yorker, New York Review of Books(NYRB), New York Times Book Review(NYTBR), Pacific Historical Review, Weekend Australian, and The Women's Review of Books.

Acton, Lord

Lord Acton. Richard Hill. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000. 548 pp. $39.95.

"Hill brings to this work his own Actonian immersion in the growing body of relevant secondary literature and in the archives. . . . Hill is best when negotiating the central problem of Acton's Catholicism and his complicated relationship with Döllinger, and the core of the book is the two chapters on the Vatican Council. He is somewhat less sure when dealing with larger contextual issues, though his summations are generally clear and sound."

H. L. Malchow. Albion 33.1 (Spring 2001): 157-58.

Alanbrooke, Lord

War Diaries 1939-1945. Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke. Ed. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001. 763 pp. $Aus65.00.

"This new edition, with Alanbrooke's original text restored, is a splendid work that gives a compelling, unrivaled insight into wartime leadership. Significantly, it confirms that Alanbrooke's influence on the palimpsest of Allied strategic policy was the right one. Given the outcome of the war, we should be grateful to him."

Red Harrison. Weekend Australian, Sept. 8-9, 2001: 15.

Andersen, Hans Christian

Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller. Jackie Wullschlager. New York: Knopf, 2001. 490 pp. $30.00.

"Wullschlager . . . has written an exemplary book: informed, sympathetic, lucid. With scholarly diligence and critical insight, she allows us to discover the real Andersen for the first time. . . . After reading Wullschlager's book, one returns to Andersen's fairy tales with deeper understanding and a new respect for the man who wrote them."

Adam Kirsch. LATBR, July 8, 2001: 9.

"Jackie Wullschlager's extensive examination of this strange, deeply self-conscious writer and his work is a remarkable achievement: thoughtful, comprehensively researched, and wonderfully readable. She spent many months in Denmark; she was able to read Andersen's tales and letters and journals in the original, and correct earlier translations. Her comments on the meaning of the stories, and their relation to his life, are often fascinating--and so is the impression her book gives of her own feelings about Andersen. . . . As a writer, Wullschlager has some of Andersen's own down-to-earth originality and humor."

Alison Lurie. NYRB, Aug. 9, 2001: 4-6.

Arvin, Newton

The Scarlet Professor, Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal. Barry Werth. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2001. 325 pp. $26.00.

"To judge from Werth's occasional dips into melodrama, he is unsure how to make emotional sense of this moral puzzle. I don't know any better than he does. But in the history of sex and intellectual life in America, Arvin's is a fascinating chapter."

Caleb Crain. NYTBR, Aug. 5, 2001: 26.

Austin, Chick

Magician of the Modern: Chick Austin and the Transformation of the Arts in America. Eugene R. Gaddis. New York: Knopf, 2001. 494 pp. $35.00.

"Grace is archivist and curator of the Austin house, that Scamozzi villa on Scarborough Street. He has found so much good material that he almost satisfies our interest in the story."

James Fenton. NYRB, Aug. 9, 2001: 22-25.

Baldwin, Stanley

Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values. Philip Williamson. New York: Cambridge UP, 1999. 378 pp. $59.95.

"Williamson's magisterial new study of Baldwin is . . . certainly timely, but it is much else besides. . . . Baldwin's early life and background is trawled for evidence of the influences shaping what the author has previously characterized as Baldwin's 'public doctrine'. . . . What emerges forcefully, however, is the significance of Baldwin's industrial background. . . . Perhaps the most important single contribution made by this book to our understanding of Baldwin lies in Williamson's discussion of his religious faith. . . . It...