Currently reading Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present by Roselee Goldberg which follows the development of performance art through the different art movements of the 20th century. I've never really read much about the medium until recently and it's truly inspiring to read about the work people were doing in early on. I'd recommend the book if you're a fan of performance art to read about its development over the years or if you're into art history.

Just about done with Southern Slavery and the Law. It's still a slog, but I've realized that most of the fine distinctions only matter if you're a lawyer. Now and then Morris admits as much, including lines to the effect that it works out the same for the slaves either way or that legal limits on an enslaver's power are both rare and ineffective by design. Still learning things, but I don't think this is the essential read I expected when I picked it up. The takeaways from most chapters are at least implicit, and often explicit, in recent slavery surveys.

However, there is a good case study of Virginia's "wave" of post-revolutionary emancipations which basically didn't happen. Not exactly news, but nice to have it quantified more thoroughly. Manumission increased, but a great number of the manumitted were individual slaves who had gotten on in years or received one-off rewards for exceptional service and the proportion of slaves manumitted remains quite small. Even that rise was deeply contested and eventually arrested by law. So it's more the noise than the signal, if we're looking for an index of Virginian feelings about slavery at the time.

I'm looking for some books that cover the medical side of things for Americas and Germans in Europe in WWII. Any phase of the war is fine. Biographies are acceptable but I'd prefer studies. Anybody got any ideas?