• On Eric Foner’s historical project. (The Nation)

• Digging up the truth about Petra. (Archaeology)

• The history that explains why visiting New York’s Penn Station isn’t a pleasure (and why leaving it is often delayed). (Politico Magazine)

• “As well as composing an impressive range of original works in verse and prose, Elizabeth I was an enthusiastic translator. Whether engaging foreign visitors in multilingual conversation or delivering withering ripostes in Latin to impertinent ambassadors, Elizabeth was celebrated for her linguistic abilities even in her own lifetime.” (Times Literary Supplement)

• On the 1919 campaign for paid leave. (New York Times)

• When the Newseum shuts down at the end of 2019, what will happen to the artifacts? (Washingtonian)

• “Jefferson designed, among many other things, a swiveling Windsor chair, a folding campstool, an improved plow, a revolving clothes rack, a folding ladder, an encryption apparatus, and the great clock and mechanized double doors that still grace his home at Monticello. He even designed the portable lap desk on which he wrote the Declaration of Independence.” He also invented a macaroni maker. (Library of Congress Blogs)

• Gordon Parks in Rio: “He confessed doubt about stories he’d done that altered people’s lives, wondering ‘if it might not have been wiser to have those lives untouched, to have let them grind out their time as fate intended.’ ” (Bookforum)

• “Individual lives do not encompass all history, but despite their messiness, obscurity and fictions, individual lives are the stitches of the past. There would be no fabric of history without them and sometimes we can only really feel the past one thread at a time.” (History Today)

• “Centuries of inbreeding to blame for ‘Habsburg jaw’ among European royals, study finds.” (The Independent)

• Looking back at the James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley debate. (TheAtlantic.com)

• Arthur Miller once adapted Pride and Prejudice. (BLARB)

• This week in obituaries: Esther Takei Nishio, Howard Cruse, D.C. Fontana, Irving Burgie, Robert K. Massie, Carolyn Konheim, and Tony Brooker.