By Julie Hilden. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 198 pp. $18.95
By Otto Rank. Transl. by Gregory C. Richter and E. James Lieberman. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 176 pp. $29.95
By Tom Beaudoin. Jossey-Bass. 210 pp.$22
By William Greider. Public Affairs Press. 208 pp. $22
By Sissela Bok. Addison-Wesley. 195 pp. $22
As the 20th century ends, legions of the powerful--politicians, intellectuals, journalists, business leaders, and visionaries--are embarking on what can only be called pilgrimages. They are traveling to an arid promised land between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, some 40 miles south of San Francisco: Silicon Valley.
Seventy years ago, W. I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas proclaimed one of sociology's most influential ideas: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." Their case in point was a prisoner who attacked people he heard mumbling absent-mindedly to themselves.
The new very broadband high capacity networks . . . ought to be built by the federal government and then transitioned into private industry.
--Vice President-elect Al Gore, at the December 1992 postelection economic summit in Little Rock
Digital technology is opening up new worlds of potential, few more enticing than the emerging global marketplace....
Longevity alone makes Byzantium remarkable. Lasting almost 1,200 years, it outlived all of the other great empires. More impressive than mere age are the reach and influence of its civilization. Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians, and others owe to Byzantium, in varying degrees, their Christianity, their literacy, and the beginnings of their art, literature, and architecture. Yet for all that, the Byzantine Empire has been slighted or misconstrued, even bysome notable historians. To see the Byzantine recordclearly, our author argues, is to understand not only aonce and great power but a civilizing force thatcontinues to shape the contemporary world.