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Reviews the book `Seasons of War: The Ordeal of a Confederate Community, 1861-1865,' by Daniel E. Sutherland.

Presents information on the cyclical pattern in the U.S. movies characterized by periods of adventurous imagination and innovation followed by periods of stabilization and formula. Discussion of the period of adventurous cinema; Detail of the era of formula movies; Description of the factors behind changes in movie season and cycles; Introduction of synchronized sound threatened to destroy the art of cinema altogether with many terrible and terribly clumsy talkies; Statement that new technological discovery re-introduced the spirit of experimentation and exploration that had gone with the studios; View that the styles of today's movies have become as codified and conventionalized as they ever were; Creation of a machine that allows the cinema to reveal something new will tempt the cinema artist to reveal it.

Around the world, particularly in the United States, debates about environmental protection have become ever-more fractious and polarized, following a radical shift in the collective understanding of environmental challenges and the appropriate responses to them. Whereas in the 1970s and the 1980s, environmental protection took the form of government-led action and intergovernmental treaty making, today it comes primarily under the heading of market capitalism and technological optimism. Sabin’s The Bet traces the growing politicization of, and free-market triumphalism around, environmental matters since the late 1960s in the context of the highly public wager between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon that has become the stuff of legend in environmental circles.