Pearsall's Books

One of my favorite websites, Sobaka, has now posted in full a piece from their 2004 anthology, Mainlines, about the as yet unsolved assassination of Srdjan Knezevic, a police chief and former militia leader from Pale, the wartime capital of the Bosnian Serbs. It's a fascinating tale, and well worth a read. I'm on the Sobaka mailing list and apparently a new edition of Mainlines is coming soon, which will be well worth a couple of dollars.

Elsewhere:

Phil at Actually Existing has written a superb piece on when and how a war can be considered 'just'.

Johnathan Edelstein has posted the latest edition of his long-running series 'The Old Bailey Files' on Jewish life in 18th-century London.

Uzbekistan has been much in the news recently, but were you aware that that troubled nation is home to one of the world's greatest ecological disasters? If you weren't, you should read about the Aral Sea.

As the son of a genuine Southern Belle, a veritable Georgia Peach, (who fortunately, lives thousands of miles away, and so will no longer be irritated by me referring to her in such cliched terms the next time I actually see her) I have to mention that this week Slate's travel piece is about barbecue.