public agencies and private institutions
"Accounting for the Decline in Union Membership."
National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge,
Mass. 02138.26 pp. $1.50.
Authors: William T. Dickens and Jonathan S. Leonard
Many theories have been advanced to third of organized labor's losses.
explain the steady decline of American But really to understand the present
labor unions since the mid-1950s. And state of American labor unions, the au-
according to D...
Sidney W. Mintz, one of 11 pamphlets in the Focus Caribbean series, published the Wilson Center's Latin American Program.
Beyond the beaches and modern hotels that beckon American tourists to the 15 island-nations and 17 depen- dent territories of the Caribbean lie endangered rural peasant societies.
On their reinvigoration, says Mintz, a Johns Hopkins anthropologist, may depend the political health of the is- lands themselves.
In an unusual way, the Caribbean's peasants are products of European...
Is New Orleans really The City questions are answered, soberly and That Care Forgot? Is it truly The Big scientifically. Health statistics are Easy, as the travel posters proclaim? called for-computerized print-outs Or could these labels be applied just covering every man, woman, and as accurately to Newark, San Jose, or child from Chalmette to River Ridge. Toledo? Reams of them. Such data should be Lawsuits over false advertising can readily at hand since Louisiana has be messy, so it is high...
James H. Hut-
son, in Reviews in American History (Dec.
ounders 1984), Johns Hopkins University Press, Whitehead Hall, 34th & Charles Sts., Baltimore, Md. 21218.
Nearly 200 years after the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention, American historians still do not agree on what they were "really" up to.
Historians have spun conflicting theories about the founding of the Republic since the Constitution was ratified in 1789. Until recently, writes...
Supreme Court interpretations of the Con- stitution, begat no new breed of revisionists. The field today belongs to scholars who, having discredited "the Beard thesis," now labor in "per- plexity and muddle."
"The Politics of Moral Vision" Michael
Lerner, in Commonweal (Jan. 1 1, 1985),
232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 1001 6.
Two decades ago, Governor Ronald Reagan rose to national promi- nence by cracking down on California's campus radicals. Last year, President...
Steven Kel- man, in The Public Interest (winter 1985), 20th & Northampton Sts., Easton, Pa. 18042.
In January 1984, the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control
(a.k.a. the Grace Commission) made a big splash in the newspapers when it reported that, during the previous three years alone, Washing- ton bureaucrats had wasted $424 billion.
Americans love to hear this kind of "bad" news, says Kelman, who teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. It confirms their conviction...
John W. Sloan, in Presidential Studies Quarterly (Winter 1985), Center for the Study of the Presidency, 208 East 75th St., New York,
N.Y. 10021.
When economists try to explain what caused America's alarming out- break of inflation during the 1970s, they point their fingers first at Arab oil sheiks, then at President Lyndon B. Johnson.
failing to increase federal taxes soon enough during the mid-1960s to cover the growing costs of the Vietnam War, they argue, LBJ allowed the US. economy to overheat,...
opposition politicians." Not un- til August 1967 did the President's counselors become sure-or force-ful-enough to convince him to request a 10 percent Vietnam War surcharge on federal income taxes. Only in June of 1968 did Congress pass it. Too little, perhaps; too late, without a doubt.
FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE
"In the National Interest" Arthur~rals Schlesinger,Jr., in Worldview (Dec. 1984),
P.O. ~0x1935,Marion, Ohio 43305.
In most countries, pursuit of the national int...
Andrew Kohut and Nicholas Horrock, in Public Opinion (0ct.-Nov. 1984), American Enterprise In- stitute, 1150 17th St. N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20036-9964.
If academic stereotypes were suddenly made real, the senior members of America's military would probably resemble the maniacal General Ripper of Dr. Strangelove fame. Just how far that caricature is from the truth is revealed Kohut and Horrock, respectively president of the Gallup Organization and Newsweek correspondent.
Moderate conservatism...
nearly 2 to 1.
"Where Reaganomics Works" Henry
R. Nau, in Foreign Policy (Winter 1984/85), P.O. Box 984, Farmingdale,
N.Y. 11737.
Free trade and protectionism are the terms usually employed in de- bates over U.S. foreign economic policy. More useful words might be "globalism" and "domesticism."
According to Nau, a George Washington University political scientist and former staff member of President Reagan's National Security Council, the globalist view has long...