Tim Russert, in case you missed the news, has died. As he was a TV journalist, it behooves the U.S. news engine to dwell on and parse every aspect of his life and death. He was one of some magazine’s 100 most important people—which, considering how many people there are, is impressive. Even I met Tim Russert. At the Union Club in Boston, back in the 20th century, he signed my copy of a Meet the Press retrospective. We must have exchanged words—though I don’t remember what they were. That may not prevent me from making some up at a later date, if necessary. Tim Russert hopefully, RIP.

Alan Gurganis confides his summer reading list to me and you:

• A Little Learning by Evelyn Waugh
• The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hadju
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolaño
• Collected Stories by Tobias Wolff
• William James: The Maelstrom of Modernism by Robert Richardson
• Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death by Deborah Blum