What does it mean to be white? (And other questions)

First, there's Linda Gordon's review of Nell Irvin Painter’s "The History of White People," which traces the concept of whiteness. Where did the term "Caucasian" originate, for example? Apparently, from a guy named Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a late-18th-century thinker who believed that the world's most beautiful people hailed from the Caucasus, a region straddling Europe and Asia (including parts of Russia, Georgia, and Armenia).

Reading about centuries worth of racial classifications is slightly creepy - but still fascinating.

Then - switching gears - there's Emily Bazelon's wonderfully snarky review of Louann Brizendine's newest offering "The Male Brain."

Brizendine published "The Female Brain" in 2006, and it made a tremendous splash, both with the scientific world and the general public, which paved the way for this well-heralded follow-up.

In "The Male Brain," she argues that men's brains reflect the fact that they are less emotional that women, less inclined to follow directions, etc. But Bazelon dismisses Brizendine's work as little more than a "scientific veneer to 'Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,'" arguing there simply is not enough data (unless you select for what you want) to show the kind of stark differences that the book alleges.

Undoubtedly, there are male/female brain differences, but I tend to think - like Bazelon - that many of those differences are shaped by social expectations.