by Redmond O'Hanlon
Random, 1985
192 pp. $16.95
by Niles Eldredge
Simon & Schuster, 1985
240 pp. $16.95
A. Malamat, H. Tadmor, M. Stern, S. Safrai, H. H. Ben-Sasson, S. Ettinger. Harvard, 1985. 1,170 pp. $18.95
In the last quarter of the second mille- nium B.c., "with the collapse of the Hit- tite Empire to the north and the decline of Egyptian power to the south," condi- tions were ripe for the peoples of Syria and Palestine to rise up and establish themselves as nations. The Arameans did so in the north; in Palestine, the Israelites emerged victorious, taking over all lands "from...
By John E. Mueller. Univ.
Press of America, 1985.300 pp. $12.75
One decade ago, little Portugal was front-page news in America. Would this NATO ally, in the aftermath of a surprise coup against Western Europe's oldest dictatorship, succumb to the Portuguese Communist Party's drive for power? Would it be- come "the Bulgaria of the West"? Washington feared the worst. Happily, Portuguese democrats prevailed. But the people whom dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar had long isolated from change could not go back to old ways and old dreams. Since 1974,...
May 20, 1498. Ten and a half months out of Lisbon, two vessels commanded by Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese nobleman, anchor off Calicut, a port on India's Malabar Coast. When the seamen go ashore, history records, the first question asked of them is, "What the devil has brought you here?"
The reply: "We have come to seek Christians and spices."
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to follow the Afri- can coast around the Cape of Good Hope and then to cross the Indian Ocean....
Thomas C.
Shortly after midnight on April 25, 1974, Lisbon's Radio Renascensa played "Grandola vila morena," an old ballad that was an anthem of the Portuguese Left. For a few listeners, most of them middle-ranking Army officers waiting in barracks up and down the country, the spirited lyrics had special meaning. The end of 48 years of dictatorship was at hand.
The ballad was the signal for rebel units to take up positions in six cities. As people were going to work in Lisbon that Thurs-...
the same hunters who roamed France and northern Spain after the Ice Age. The first settlers appear to have come from Andalusia after 4000 B.C.
Sailing west out of the Mediterra- nean, Phoenician traders set foot on Portugal's shores after 1000 B.C. Later, Celtic farmers and herders moved south from France to the green northwest. They turned some of the hilltop castros (forts) they built, or found, into walled cities.
When the Romans, having bested the Carthaginians in Africa and Spain, entered...
Everyone knows Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will. Most of us, most of the time, do not take it seriously. It merely expresses our sense of the perversity of inanimate ob- jects, the ironies and frustrations of everyday life.
Scientists and engineers, however, take Murphy's Law seri- ously, though not literally, in building a nuclear power station or planning a space flight. The stakes are too great not to. In a similar way, many thoughtful persons take Murphy's Law seri- ously,...