Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:
• Review: "Some of the most interesting travel books happen by accident. If Alexander Theroux’s wife had not gone to Estonia on a Fulbright Scholarship, it is unlikely that he would have spent an extended period in the tiny Baltic republic, an experience that impelled him to write this book [Estonia: A Ramble Through the Periphery]…. Despite all [his] genuine delight in the quaint, not merely linguistic but extending also to Estonian architecture, what Mr. Theroux mostly shows us about the country and its people is exasperation, irritation, furious rage. To say that it — and they — get on his nerves is the mildest of understatements. He takes endless potshots at their food, admittedly an easy target, but by the time you get near the end of the book and find a section titled 'What did I hate about Estonia,' it’s no surprise." – Martin Rubin, The Washington Times
• Plug: "The premise of Pat Thomas's handsome book [Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975] is that this was an era in which revolutionaries such as Bobby Seale and Angela Davis were treated as pop cultural icons, while musicians became revolutionaries – meaning Gil Scott-Heron, the Last Poets, Bob Dylan, John Lennon and more." – Caspar Llewellyn Smith, The Guardian