By Leonard W. Levy.
Knopf. 688 pp. $35
By Stanley Fish.
Oxford Univ. Press. 332 pp. $25
By Alan Kraut.
HarperCollins. 352 pp. $25
By Alan Cromer.
Oxford. 240 pp. $23
By Francis Crick.
Scribner's. 336 pp. $25
uc11 has been written about the first
100 or so years of railroading in
America, when the industry roared forward in tandem with the U.S. economy. Sel- dom discussed, like some embarrassing relative who went to pot, are the years since 1940.
For the most part, railroad literature consists of individual histories of the dozens of railways that sprouted during the industry's heyday. Many of these books-and there are literally hundreds of them-are more anecdotal than lus- torical, and, as often a...
tions are utterly separate and unique, some of larger, latter-day states. The Fourth World them very ancient indeed, as in the case of the
50 WQ WINTER 1994
LITTLE NATIONS
ALASTAIR REID
Basques of Spain. The demands of such en- claves may very well occupy an international small-claims court for the next century. At present, we are made only too brutally aware of the ruthlessness and mindlessness of their impatience.In talking about thwarted nation- alism, however, one fundamental point has t...
THE RISE OF EUROPE'S
The formation of the European
Community and the end of the Cold War
had one common and quite
unintended result: Both gave
encouragement to the nationalist urges
of numerous regions zuithin
Europe's established nation-states.
What these stirrings zuill finally
produce in places such as
the fanner Yugoslavia, Scotland, or
Lombardy is impossible to predict.
But three of our contributors--
Alastair Reid, William McPJierson, and
David Gies-look at three...
t their outset at least, the 1992
Summer Olympics in Barcelona
appeared to be organized by
people who had nationalism, not sports, foremost inmind. Consider the curious fact that the three official languages of the games were English, French, and Catalan. Why Catalan and not Spanish? Because Olym- pic Committee rules allow for the use of Eng- lish, French, and the language of the country hosting the games. More to the point, the or- ganizers had no doubt that Catalan was the language of their...