Pe-
Translating Homer ter Jones, in Encounter (Jan. 1988),44 Great
Windmill St., London W1V 7PA, United King-
dom.
The Roman statesman Cato the Elder (234-149 B.c.) counseled young orators: rem tene, verba sequenturÃ?â??6'Kee a grip on the argument, and the words will follow." Jones, a senior lecturer in classics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, agrees with Cato's advice. Translators, he argues, should conserve each sentence in the original text.
A translation...
Soviet unemployment, according to The Economist, takes three forms. Some is "frictional"; at any time, two percent of all Soviet workers are moving to new jobs. Another one percent are "parasites," those who lack formal employment-vagabonds, black marketeers, and dissidents. (Poet Joseph Brodsky, the 1987 Nobel laureate, was once classed as a parasite.)
But the biggest problem is "hidden unemployment." There are un- counted millions of Soviets who have jobs but produce...
John P.
Bums, in Problems of Communism (Sept.-Oct.
19871, U.S. Information Agency, 301 4th St.
S.W., Washington, D.C. 20547.
In the Soviet Union, the Communist Party exercises power through the nomenklatura (nomenclature), the patronage system under which the Po- litburo directly controls key positions in most political, governmental, so- cial, and cultural organizations. However, all Communist states use such a system. In China, says Bums, a political scientist at the University of Hong Kong, t...
Jawaharlal Nehru) who ruled India after independence from Britain in 1947 believed that centralized planning and curbs on corporations were the keys to economic develop- ment. Led family-owned "business houses" (such as the Tatas of Bom- bay and the Birlas of Calcutta) descended from old trading firms, India's industrialists accepted Nehru's socialist restrictions rather than risk na- tionalization under a more radical regime. They chose to gain influence through massive campaign contributions...
For centuries, as merchant ships plied the high seas, pirates lurked somewhere nearby to prey upon them. Usually murderous and cruel, such maritime brigands have seldom been completely lawless. In-deed, throughout history, and regardless of national origin, most free- hooters have avoided anarchy; in some cases, they fashioned their own ethical codes as well as special notions of authority. Between 1716 and 1726, the brief heyday of Anglo-American piracy, thou- sands of men sailed under the Jolly...
public agencies and private institutions
"Abortion and Divorce in Western Law."
Harvard Univ. Press, 79 Garden St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138. 197 pp. $25.
Author: Mary Ann Glendon
Until two decades ago, most Western na-
tions imposed tight restrictions on the ter-
mination of both marriages and pregnan-
cies. Abortion was allowed only if the
mother's life was in danger; divorces were
usually granted the courts only on
grounds of "marital offenses"-cruelty,
adultery, o...
by Forrest C. Pogue
Viking, 1987
603 pp. $29.95
by David Tracy
Harper, 1987
148 pp. $15.95
by Roy Porter
Harvard, 1987
412 pp. $38.50