The newspaper axis

Six Press Barions Who Enabled Hitler. Kathrin S. Olmsted. Yale University Press, 2022, 328 pages.

• Chapter 5 on William Randolph Hearst. 

Amazing. Puts some perspective on deep lines and recent manifestations. The book also illustrates the limits of the power of the press in face of a real statesman.

Makers of American ideology: John Locke and Adam Smith as misunderstood founding fathers

David Armitage: review of

• AMERICA’S PHILOSOPHERAMERICA’S PHILOSOPHER: John lifeJohn Locke in American intellectual life. ClaIre Rydell Arcena. (280pp. University of Chicago Press. US $35).
• ADAM SMITH’S AMERICA: How a Scottish philosopher became an icon of American capitalism. Glory LiuGlory M. Liu. (384pp. Princeton University Press. US $35).

Healthy correction. Great writing. (Not every review on Locke or Smith is peppered with references to Les Misérables or Generalfeldmarschall Helmuth von Moltke).

History alive in the diary of Victor Klemperer: LTI

Entries for the evening of the March 33 elections, an outlook at the history of Sachsen, his driving test (age 52), the reoccupation of the left bank of the Rhine (spot on prediction by his butcher), the vote and the Stimmung two weeks later, the prediction by the vox populi on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, one week before negotiations started, including the so-called secret clause, and also...February 14-15, 1945 in Dresden.