Roger Copeland, in
Partisan Review (Vol. 3, 1986), Boston Univ.,
141 Bay State Rd., Boston, Mass. 02215.
Few art forms get more criticism than does classical ballet.
Seizing on its aristocratic air, its rigidity-from leap to en point spin, every move is prescribed-and the seeming lack of social "relevance" of such ballets as Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, proponents of free-flowing modem dance denounce ballet as an art for mere aesthetes. The critics, notes...
Nicholas
Eberstadt, in Caribbean Review (No. 2, 1986),
--Florida International Univ., Tamiami Trail, Mi-
ami, Fla. 33199.
Like him or not, Fidel Castro has made Cuba a more literate, healthier, and better-educated nation-or so many American journalists and government officials believe.
These folk do not include Eberstadt, a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He argues that only fudging key statistics has Havana been able to pass itself off as a "socialist showcase."
In...
Nicholas
Eberstadt, in Caribbean Review (No. 2, 1986),
--Florida International Univ., Tamiami Trail, Mi-
ami, Fla. 33199.
Like him or not, Fidel Castro has made Cuba a more literate, healthier, and better-educated nation-or so many American journalists and government officials believe.
These folk do not include Eberstadt, a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He argues that only fudging key statistics has Havana been able to pass itself off as a "socialist showcase."
In...
in two decades that were free of fraud.
The elections brought to power Mario Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, 43, the leader of the Christian Democratic Party. He is only the third civilian chief that Guatemala has had since socialist Jhcobo Arbenz GuzrnAn was over- thrown, with U.S:-help, in 1954. If Cerezo is to survive his five-year term, writes Perera, a teacher of writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz, he "will need qualities of political judgment and courage well beyond those...
Chalmers Johnson, in Asian Survey (May 1986), Univ. of California Press, ~erkeley, Calif. 94720.
For Nakasone Yasuhiro, Japan's prime minister since 1982, as for his predecessors, defense policy is a delicate matter. Too little military spend- ing sparks U.S. complaints that Japan is getting a "free ride" on defense. Too much triggers charges of "revived militarism" at home and reminds Japan's neighbors of their harsh wartime experiences.
Johnson, a political scientist at the...
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Shortly after receiving the 1982 Nobel Prize for literature, Colom- bian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez remarked upon the mysterious failure of the Nobel committee to recognize the elder statesman of modem Latin American letters, Jorge Luis Borges: "I still don't un-derstand why they don't give it to him." It was not false modesty. Like other Latin American writers, Garcia Marquez owes much to the labyrinthine imagination of Borges, who died last summer. His luminous f...
public agencies and private institutions
"National Service: WhatWogld It Mean?"
Lexington Books, 125 Spring St., ~exingon, Mass. 02173. 307 pp. $16.
Authors: Richard Danzig and Peter Szanton.
"Compulsory national servicem-an idea that has come and gone many times in re- cent U.S. history-is seeing a revival.
A recent Gallup poll found 65 percent approval of a program in which young peo- ple would serve their country-either in the military or a public service agency- for at...
Robert D. Richardson, Jr. Univ. of California, 1986 455 pp. $25
William Leary
Alabama, 1986
281 pp. $22.50
Maury Klein
Johns Hopkins, 1986
595 pp. $27.50