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In Essence | Summer 1991
Explosive Intelligence

W. R. Connor, in The American Why the Experts Scholar (Spring 1991), 1811 Q St. N.W., Washington, D.C.

Were So Wrong 20009.
Despite prodigious intellectual labors (and prodigious sums spent to make them pos- sible), Western Sovietologists failed to foresee in any clear way the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and East- ern Europe. Where did the analysts go wrong? Connor, director of the National Humanities Center at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. savs that it was in
* .,
n...

In Essence | Summer 1991
The Gulf War And Vietnam

Ronald Radosh and Eric Breindel, in The NewExplosive Intelligence Republic (June 10, 1991), 1220 19th St. N.W., Washington, D.C.
Diehard defenders of Julius and Ethel Ro- senberg and other convicted Soviet spies have long dismissed the idea that espio- nage might have helped the Soviet Union learn how to make an atomic bomb. Now comes confirmation that that was exactly what happened, and it comes from an un- expected source: the KGB itself. Radosh, co-author of The Rosenberg File (1983), and Breindel,...

In Essence | Summer 1991
Corporations Without Countries

Robert B.Reich, in Corporations Without Issues in Science and Technology (Winter 1990-91), National Countries Acad. of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Ave., Washington, D.C.
20418.

Does improving U.S. "competitiveness" mean making American-owned corpora- tions more productive and profitable, and boosting their share of world markets? Not so much as it once did, contends Reich, of Harvard's Kennedy School of Govern- ment. With U.S. corporations increasingly employing foreign workers, and f...

In Essence | Summer 1991
Meddling Works

Sally Clarke, in The Journal of Eco- nomic History (Mar. 1991), 21 1 Watkins Home, Hall Ctr. for the Humanities, Univ. of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045.

Many Americans have come to believe that government interference with market forces always hinders economic growth. Clarke, a historian at the University of Texas, has come up with a case to the con- trary: New Deal intervention in the agri- cultural economy.
To be sure, setting prices and restrict- ing farm production Washington "dis-torted c...

In Essence | Summer 1991
'Correct' Suppression

James S. Coleman,

'Correct' SU~~Y~SS~O~
in National Review (Mar. 18, 1991), 150 E. 35th St., New York,
N.Y. 10016.

Whence comes the most serious threat to academic freedom? According to Univer- sity of Chicago sociologist James S. Cole- man, it comes not from craven university administrators or a philistine public, nor even from "politically correct" students, but from the very highest priests of the temples of learning-the professors. "There are taboos on certain topics," he say...

In Essence | Summer 1991
Dances With Romance

James S. Coleman,

'Correct' SU~~Y~SS~O~
in National Review (Mar. 18, 1991), 150 E. 35th St., New York,
N.Y. 10016.

Whence comes the most serious threat to academic freedom? According to Univer- sity of Chicago sociologist James S. Cole- man, it comes not from craven university administrators or a philistine public, nor even from "politically correct" students, but from the very highest priests of the temples of learning-the professors. "There are taboos on certain topics," he say...

In Essence | Summer 1991
Underground Disorder

the 1620s, the Montagnais at Tadoussac, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, "were using large quantities of clothing, hatchets, iron arrowheads, nee- dles, sword blades, ice picks, knives, kettles, and preserved foods that they purchased from In this engraving from Theodore de Bry's Historia Americae the French." similarly, the MO- sive Novi Orbis (1596).Indians vrevare to test the immortal- hawks, near what is now Albany.
ity of a .Spaniard holding him under water.
had no practical...

In Essence | Summer 1991
A Kind Word For TV

Steven L. Gortmaker,
For TV Charles A. Salter, Deborah K. Walker, and William H.Dietz, Jr., in Public Opinion Quarterly (Winter 1990), Inst. for Social Re- search, P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48016.

Many parents are sure that TV is rotting their children's minds. The average Ameri- can youngster spends more than 15 hours a week in front of the TV set, so that would mean a lot of wasted brainpower. Not to worry, say Gortmaker, acting chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Harvard's S...

In Essence | Summer 1991
All the Fluff That Fits

Steven L. Gortmaker,
For TV Charles A. Salter, Deborah K. Walker, and William H.Dietz, Jr., in Public Opinion Quarterly (Winter 1990), Inst. for Social Re- search, P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48016.
Many parents are sure that TV is rotting their children's minds. The average Ameri- can youngster spends more than 15 hours a week in front of the TV set, so that would mean a lot of wasted brainpower. Not to worry, say Gortmaker, acting chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Harvard's...

In Essence | Summer 1991
New Age Nonsense

Christopher Lasch, in New Oxford Review (Apr. 1991), 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, Calif. 94706.
The New Age movement "invites a mix- ture of ridicule and indignant alarm," Uni- versity of Rochester historian Christopher Lasch observes, but the discontents it ad- dresses are "supremely importantw-and hence deserve a better response than the New Age one.
The movement's central teaching is "that it doesn't matter what you believe as long as it works for you." Actress-author...

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