Young Italian Woman at a Table, by Paul Cézanne, c. 1895. © The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
• COVID-19 in historical context: dancing through the bad times, the Civil War, Athanasius Kircher, the history of social distancing, William Wood Gerhard, reading in isolation, and knowing when it’s over.
• The original big short. (The Boston Globe Magazine)
• Don’t trust a historical photograph placed in a new context if you aren’t quite sure of the original context. (Gizmodo)
• Meet King Erik VII, pirate. (Narratively)
• “Why hasn’t the U.S. expulsion of native peoples in the 1830s taken its place among the first modern deportations?” (Aeon)
• On Heinrich von Kleist. (The Baffler)
• The Tiger King of Harlem. (Mel)
• “The archaeological record is full of dog poop.” (Science)
• On Grangerization. (JSTOR Daily)
• This week in obituaries: Sarah Maldoror, Ann Sullivan, Beryl Bernay, Matthew Seligman, Heherson Alvarez, Allen Daviau, Cheryl A. Wall, Deirdre Bair, Nina Balducci, Virginia Savage McAlester, Shirley Knight, Walentyna Janta-Polczynska, Rubem Fonseca, Jeffery Camp, Robert Loomis, and Thomas Mensah.