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Robert Moses is the most reviled man in the history of American urban planning. But recently a trio of exhibits in New York City, mounted this past spring in coordination with a symposium at Columbia University and the publication of an extensive catalog of Moses’s public works projects, summed up the extent to which historians’ perspectives on this brilliant and arrogant man have evolved. Bruce Epperson, “Eminence Domain.”

Neil Kamil’s Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots’ New World, 1517–1751, is a monumental work, a brilliant tapestry of objects, texts, artisanal networks, apocalyptic battles, and political maneuvers. Kamil elaborates the political context and material forms of an “artisanal soulishness” that stretches over two centuries and serves as the refuge, means of mobility, and stable center of unity for Huguenot Protestant culture in its diaspora throughout the Atlantic world. Mary Henninger-Voss, “Craft Secrets Religiously Kept.”

Arnold Reisman’s Turkey’s Modernization brings to light the little-known story of how Turkey welcomed (and thus saved) several hundred prominent, predominantly Jewish, intellectuals, scientists, doctors, legal scholars, architects, librarians, and musicians fleeing the Nazis. Absent that welcome, the knowledge and expertise of these Jewish scientists and artists might have been lost forever—and Turkey’s own modernization and educational and social reforms set back as well. Yakup Bektas, “‘The German-Turk Miracle.’”

In 1892, when this photo of Frederick Wood and John Fowler of the Temple Street Cable Railway in Los Angeles demonstrating their cable-rail system was taken, electric streetcars were about to cast these two capable men into historical obscurity. One wonders whether the men at General Motors who have filled their basket with so many eggs bearing names like Suburban, Escalade, and Hummer have a similar sense of apprehension. Robert C. Post, On the Cover.

“E-books” are increasingly common, and scholars are being encouraged to publish electronically; Sarah Lowengard’s The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe is a case in point. It is worth pondering how traditional ideas of what makes a scholarly book will have to change in the face of that trend. Lissa Roberts, “The Content of the Form.”

It is the rare scholar of American transportation history who has not used George Rogers Taylor’s The Transportation Revolution as the launchpad for his or her own research, and it remains a classic work of technological history. Bruce Seely, “Economic History as Technological History.”

In 2006, Tom Tits Experiment, a science center located south of Stockholm in Södertälje, Sweden, received the European Museum Forum’s Micheletti Award, a prize established in 1996 that goes to the year’s most promising technical or industrial museum. How does a hands-on science center capture a prize intended for technology museums? Anna Storm and Nina Wormbs, “Tom Tits Experiment, Södertälje, Sweden.”

The challenges of designing successful museum exhibitions are daunting: unpredictable and individualistic visitors, a clamorous entertainment marketplace, rising costs, and, for museums of science and technology specifically, a subject matter often difficult to present in a traditional exhibition format. David Dernie’s new book makes a provocative contribution to a fledgling critical literature on exhibition design: Harold Skramstad, “The Exhibiting Dilemma.”

The formula for world’s fairs has become strained. Displays of technological might, industrial abundance, and national ingenuity have given way to less dramatic themes of environmentalism and global cooperation. Is there still any point? Fred Nadis, “Nature at Aichi World’s Expo 2005.”

It is fifty years since the publication of A. Hunter Dupree’s Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities. No one would attempt such a project today, but after half a century the book still speaks to the present. John Cloud, “Discerning the Relation between American Science and American Democracy.”

In wartime, technological advantage combined with opportunity has proved irresistible. How, in retrospect, can we account for the terror bombing of World War II? Harold Dorn, “Technology as Destiny: Jörg Friedrich, The Fire.”

Two new books advance the still-young field of polar history, but work remains to be done before we see the poles more clearly as regions intimately connected to our own history and concerns. Karen Oslund, “Beyond Men and Machines: New Contributions to the History of Polar Exploration.”

Digital gaming is big business. The museum exhibition Game On, recently at the Science Museum and now touring Asia and Australia, examines its evolution from a niche activity to a mainstream phenomenon. Stefan Schmitt, “Half a Century of Digital Gaming.”