have been written Europeans. And, until recently, argues Syed Hussein Alatas of the University of Singapore, most have perpetuated The Myth of the Lazy Native (Cass, 1977).
In a colorful tour of earlier historical writings, Alatas cites dozens of examples of this stereotype. In 1927, for example, Hugh Clifford flatly stated that the Ma- lay "never works if he can help it, and often will not suffer himself to be in- duced or tempted into doing so by offers of the most extravagant wages."
But,...
John Stuart Mill has held the attention of the reading public of the Western world longer than any other 19th-century philosopher, with the notable exception of Karl Marx.
Each man is known as theorist of one central idea. Marx is read by his admirers as a champion of equality. Mill is read for his words on liberty, words that have contributed much to the debates of our own time about the freedom of dissenters, minorities, and women. He was always controversial. William Gladstone, the great Liberal...
Not since the 1920s has the United States experienced such topsy- turvy economic change. During the current decade, the nation has witnessed a deep recession, a roaring bull market, instant Wall Street tycoons, bankrupt Texas oilmen, millionaire baseball players, a wave of farm foreclosures, Yuppies, and unemployed steelworkers.
Steven Lagerfeld and Robert W. Hodge take a look at socialism in the U.S.
Middletown, published in 1929 by Robert and Helen Lynd, was the nation's first sociological bestseller. Together with a sequel, Middletown in Transition (1937), written during the Great Depression, it secured a reputation for Muncie, Indiana, as the archetypal middle American city. Muncie, rhapsodized the editors of Life in 1937, was "every small U.S. city from Maine to California," a place where pollsters and market re- searchers could flock to take the pulse of America.
Life claimed...
Unlike. many European writers, the American novelist rarely speaks of class. As Lionel Trilling once observed, "the great characters of American fiction, such, say, as Captain Ahab and Natty Bumppo, tend to be mythic.. .and their very freedom from class gives them a large and glowing generality." In the United States, he believed, "the real ba- sis of the [English] novel has never ex- isted-that is, the tension between a middle class and an aristocracy."
American novelists...
Donald L. Horo-
witz, in The Public Interest (Summer 1987), 10
East 53rd St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
Since World War 11, says Horowitz, a Duke University political scientist, every American president except Dwight Eisenhower has "met with death, disgrace, or grave political disability."
But are failed presidencies the fault of the men who have been presi- dent? Or is failure inherent in the office? The answer, Horowitz argues, can be found in the conflicting sentiments of the Founding F...