A committee for the San Francisco Unified School District recommends renaming schools named after Abraham Lincoln (because of his attitude towards Native Americans), George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (because they owned slaves), and Dianne Feinstein (because she hugged Lindsey Graham at the end of the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court nomination hearings). This story has been around for some time, but is only now gaining national attention. Back in November, the editorial board of The San Francisco Chronicle opposed the recommendations: “‘Wherever a monument to the Confederacy meets a deserved demise, its defenders can be counted on to warn that this is the top of a slippery slope toward a wholesale cleansing of every trace of our history based on the sensitivities of 21st-century leftists,’ the editorial board wrote. ‘It’s a specious, disingenuous argument, but the San Francisco school board is doing its best to prove it right.’”

In other news: The source text for Shakespeare’s King Lear had a happy ending. Why did he change it? Because of the plague, one critic argues: “Shakespeare’s experience of the plague was so powerful and immersive he had no need to name it repeatedly in his work. As a result, Shakespearean scholars and directors have often failed to spot the growing effect it had.”

Cooking for tyrants: “How to Feed a Dictator is the reporter Witold Szabłowski’s account of the careers of five cooks who respectively managed the kitchens of Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro and Pol Pot, and personally prepared the autocrats’ food. Through interviews with the cooks, Szabłowski aims to give oblique glimpses of the domestic lives of despots and convey what it is like to feed someone whose appetite can only truly be satisfied with power over life and death. Enver Hoxha’s cook Mr K remembers, ‘If you wanted to live, you had to take every one of his comments to heart’.”

Texas Monthly to start publishing books: “Some experts predicted that the rise of e-books would render the classic variety obsolete. Yet sales of both digital and physical books have risen in recent years, with the latter growing by 6.4 percent in the first nine months of 2020. During the pandemic, we’ve rediscovered the pleasure of curling up with a novel after a long day spent in front of a computer. That’s a trend, like online grocery shopping, that will stay with us long after COVID-19 is gone. At least, that’s what I’m hoping—and betting. I’m pleased to announce that in late November, Texas Monthly signed a deal to produce four books over the next four years, to be published by Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins. The first volume will go on sale next fall and will cover, in scores of articles by the state’s best writers, the many ways one can be Texan, the landscapes and traditions that we love, the vibrancy and diversity of our small towns and cities, our music and cuisine, and the continuing evolution of the Lone Star State.”

Tod Lindberg reviews Tim Weiner’s The Folly and the Glory: “If Putin elected Trump in 2016, what happened in 2020? Did Russia, having mastered political warfare to the point of victory then, lose interest four years later? Was it thwarted in 2020 by—Trump-administration countermeasures? Fact checks on Twitter? Whatever else may be said of 2020, on the positive side of the ledger is how it has dispelled the notion that the Russians have subverted and now dominate American politics. If you start with the unshakeable conviction that Trump is a Russian agent of influence, then no inability of the independent counsel to demonstrate criminal collusion will persuade you otherwise. Never say no evidence. Say ‘no known evidence.’ But if this conviction drives you to revisit the entire postwar era and conclude that the Soviet Union then was and Vladimir Putin now is doing everything possible to undermine American democracy through ‘political warfare,’ I’ll take it. Now do China.”

Yves Tanguy painting found in airport dumpster after it was forgotten by its owner: “The old adage of ‘one person’s trash is another’s treasure’ rang particularly true last week, when authorities recovered a Surrealist painting worth about $340,000 from a recycling bin at Germany’s Düsseldorf Airport, the Associated Press reports.”

Photos: The year in volcanic activity