Ukraine abandoned  —  At his first press briefing after the beheading of American James Foley, President Obama stunned the assembled when he admitted that he had no strategy for confronting ISIS, a.k.a. the Islamic State, in Syria.  Yet it was not nearly the most egregious, or consequential, thing he said.

Our withdrawn review “Blood cotton”  —  Apology: In our review of “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” by Edward Baptist, we said: “Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery.  Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.”