such authors as James rep- resented an escape from the "frantic acquisitiveness" that dominated American life. Characters were catapulted into wealth and high sta- tus, as Zanger points out, in a way that carefully avoided "any realis- tic examination of the practical and moral problems attached to the accumulation of money."
Ultimately, says Zanger, an aristocracy of inherited wealth contra- dicts the American ideal of the self-made man. Yet as long as fame and fortune appear...
John McPhee, in The Swiss Army The New Yorkey (Oct. 31 and Nov. 7,1983),
25 West 43rd St.,New York, N.Y. 10036.
For nearly 500 years, Switzerland has stayed out of Europe's wars relying on what the Swiss call the "Porcupine Principle." The formula is simple, reports McPhee, a New Yorker writer: The tiny nation bristles with arms and its people stand ready to fight.
Topography-the Jura mountains and the Alps-makes Switzerland
The Wilson QuarterlyISpring 1984
39
PERIODICALS
OTHER N...
their de- signers, ready to self-destruct on command. Mountains are honey- combed with airplane hangars, tunnels full of food and munitions, and command posts. Shelters against nuclear attack are everywhere; one alpine highway tunnel is fitted with five-foot-thick concrete doors at either end, making it "the biggest bomb shelter in the world."
Almost all able-bodied Swiss men are drafted into the Army (it has only some 30,000 professional soldiers) for 30 years of part-time ser- vice....
15-25 percent) and slashed the public payroll (50 percent be- tween 1973 and '77), boosted taxes, and slowed money supply growth. During the next three years, inflation plunged from 340 percent to 30 percent annually. Economic growth accelerated to a 7.3 percent an- nual rate in 1978. Some economists began talking about a "Chilean economic miracle."
By early 1982, however, that talk had been silenced. Industrial out- put fell sharply, unemployment climbed to 23 percent, and bankrupt-...
the influx after midcentury of reform-minded white colonists-the same Europeans whose ancestors had vastly expanded the slave trade 200 years earlier.
ong Kong's "The International Position of Hong
Kong" Lucian W. Pye, in The China
(Sept. 1983), School of Oriental
Uncertain Future ~ua~terl~
and African Studies, Malet St., London WC1E 7HP, England.
Nervous businessmen in Hong Kong, facing a Chinese takeover once Britain's 99-year lease to the territory expires in 1997, were not...
by Gertrude Himmelfarb
Knopf, 1984
196 pp. $25
by Edward N. Luttwak
St. Martin's, 1983
242 pp. $14.95
by Keith Weller Taylor
Univ. of Calif., 1983
397 pp. $38.50
by John J. Stephan
Univ. of Hawaii, 1984
228 pp. $16.95
by A. W. Simpson
Univ. of Chicago, 1984
354 pp. $25