By J . R. McNeill. Norton. 421 pp.$29.95
By Roy Strong. Fromm International.708 pp. $55
This year's election is sure to bring more lamentations about voter apathy. No less striking is the appalling political ignorance of the American electorate.
William Butler Yeats took to the radio in the 1930s with poetry that he hoped would sound a public theme and stir the public interest.
The family farm in America has all but vanished, and with it we are losing centuries of social and civic wisdom imparted by the agrarian life.
Summaries of recent papers, studies, and meetings at the Wilson Center
"The Effects of Negative Political Advertisements: A Meta-Analytic Assessment" by Richard R. Lau et al.; "Do Negative Campaigns Mobilize or Suppress Turnout? Clarifying the Relationship between Negativity and Participation" by Kim Fridkin Kahn and Patrick J. Kenney; "Negative Campaign Advertising: Demobilizer or Mobilizer?" by Martin P. Wattenberg and Craig Leonard Brians; and "Replicating Experiments Using Aggregate and Survey Data: The Case of Negative Advertising and Turnout" by Stephen D. Ansolabehere et al., in American Political Science Review (Dec. 1999), 1527 New Hampshire Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.