By Helen Vendler. Harvard Univ. Press. 256 pp. $24.95
By Carlos Baker. Introduction and epi- logue by James R. Mellow. Viking. 672 pp. $34.95
By Murray Weidenbaum and Samuel Hughes. Free Press. 264 pp. $24
Edited by Keith Howard. Cassell. 192 pp. $60 cloth, $16.95 paper
By Harvey C. Mansfield. Univ. of chicago Press. 387 pp. $29.95
By James-Charles Noonan, Jr. Viking. 554 pp. $34.95
For venturing to explore the role of biology in our social lives, I have had more than my share of interesting moments. In addition to slander and calumny--depressingly standard fare in the academy today--I have received bomb threats at lectures in Vancouver and Montreal and the promise of a "kneecapping" at the New School for Social Research in New York.
The artists, poets, composers, and dramatists now reaching their maturity have lived through a time of crisis for the arts. Some of us are questioning the whole 200-year-old tradition of the avant-garde and rethinking our aesthetics from the ground up.
Budget cuts. Debt reduction. Smaller government. One hundred and fifty years ago, the state of New York fired the first shots in a nationwide political revolution strikingly similar to today's.