Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh Harcourt, 1986 321 pp. $19.95
THE BLIND WATCHMAKER: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
Richard Dawkins Norton, 1986 332 pp. $18.95
CURRENT BOOKS
Mathematicians have never been popular, partly because tests in their subject are so frequently used as a social filter, a means, for example, of selecting candidates for business school. But most business courses require no knowledge of calcu- lus, and ease with the quadratic formula should b...
Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh Harcourt, 1986 321 pp. $19.95
THE BLIND WATCHMAKER: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
Richard Dawkins Norton, 1986 332 pp. $18.95
CURRENT BOOKS
Mathematicians have never been popular, partly because tests in their subject are so frequently used as a social filter, a means, for example, of selecting candidates for business school. But most business courses require no knowledge of calcu- lus, and ease with the quadratic formula should...
. Stanislaw Lem. Harcourt, 1986. 285 pp. $5.95
Born in Lvov, Poland, in 1921, and edu- cated as a doctor, Lem has slowly become known to American readers through his highly philosophical science fiction. Books like Eden (1959) and Solaris (1961) are as noteworthy for their treatment of ideas (e.g., cybernetics) as for their fantastic plots and settings. Repeatedly throughout these 10 discussions of science (and other) fiction, Lem voices his low opinion of a genre that he believes is a "hopeless...
Thirty years ago, two new nations achieved independence from Brit- ain.One was prosperous Ghana in West Africa; it has since become a textbook case of Third World economic folly, official corruption, and chronic repression. The other, in Southeast Asia, was Malaysia (born as Malaya), which had just weathered a bitter communist guerrilla war. Largely ignored American headline writers, Malaysia's politi- cians quietly found ways to overcome deep-seated antipathies among its Malay, Chinese, and Indian...
J. W. W. Birch was an odd choice to be the first British adviser in Perak. An imperious colonial bureaucrat with 30 years of service, mostly in Ceylon, he had little knowledge of Malaya's customs or its language. But he exemplified the patriotism and starchy self-confidence of the Victorian Englishman, convinced, as historian Joseph Kennedy put it, that "if one Mr. Birch died, another would take his place."
Upon his arrival in Perak in 1874, Birch, along with his deputy, Captain T....
"What went wrong?"
Those were the first words of The Malay Dilemma (1970), by Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, a young, up-and-coming Malaysian politician and future prime minister. Little more than a decade after their nation had achieved independence from Britain, many Malaysians were asking themselves the same question.
On May 13, 1969, a dozen years of relative harmony among Ma- lays, Chinese, and Indians had ended abruptly in bloody street riots that racked Kuala Lumpur. The cause of...