BACKGROUND BOOKS
All societies, not just 20th-century America, confront the mysteries of the deranged, disturbed, or eccentric mind. In the past, they have vari- ously responded elevating the "touched" to positions of considera- ble influence or mystical signifi- cance, by ostracizing or killing them, or by subjecting them to harsh phys- ical or psychological ordeals in the hope of effecting a cure.
The crucial question is: Who is really deranged?
"Every culture, to my knowledge,...
public agencies and priix~te iizstit~itioizs
"Living With Nuclear Weapons."
Harvard Press, 79 Garden St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138. 268 pp. $12.95 cloth. Bantam Books, 666 5th Ave., New York, N.Y. 10103.269 pp. $3.95 paper. Authors: Albert Carnesale, Paul Doty, Stanley Hoffman, Samuel P. Huntington,
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Scott D. Sagan
"Living with nuclear weapons is our only hope. It requires that we perse- vere in reducing the likelihood of war even though we cannot remove the...
The election of 1960 became a classic commanded the political landscape of American political history. It at- since the first term of Franklin D. tracted the highest rate of voter par- Roosevelt. ticipation in half a century (64 Broadly speaking, contemporary percent), marked the emergence of a liberalism could claim legitimate de- glamorous new personality (John F. scent from historic bourgeois liberal- Kennedy), and restored to power, ism, with its affirmation of reason, after an eight-year...
TomSix Years in Wicker, in The New York Times Magazine
(June 26, 1983), 229 West 43rd St., New The Oval Office? York, N.Y. 10036.
Debated the 1787 Constitutional Convention, endorsed by most 19th-century U.S. Presidents, denounced by Harry S Truman, the idea of a single six-year presidential term is once again gaining political ap- peal.
Wicker, a New York Timescolumnist, recalls that the last serious ef- fort to establish a six-year term came early in 1913, when the U.S. Sen- ate approved a...
Arthur Miller, in Public Owinion (June-Julv Pn,Ac,-AmAnfl 1983), American ~nterprise ~nstitute for
Pn-LurLj LUG~LL-c wup Public Policy ~esearch, 1150 17th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Beginning in 1964, public opinion surveys show, the average Ameri- can's confidence in the federal government began a long downhill slide. But that trend may now have reversed.
According to Miller, director of Michigan's Institute for Social Re- search, biennial opinion polls conducted the Institute show that...
Charles
Liberals versus Peters, in The Washington Monthly (May
Neoliberals 1983), 2712 Ontario Rd. N.W., Washing-
ton, D.C. 20009.
American political liberals are beginning to look almost as imperiled as the snail darter once was. Many liberals left the fold during the 1960s and '70s to become "neoconservatives." Today, even more are de- camping to join the "neoliberals."
Notable defectors, writes Peters, Washington Monthly editor and himself a self-styled neoliberal, include...
Jiri Valenta, in Foreign Policy (Summer 1983), P.O. Box 984, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11737.
The Soviet Union's reactions to unrest in Poland, Hungary, Afghani- stan, and other neighboring states have repeatedly strained super- power relations since World War 11. To avert such tensions, says Valenta, a Soviet affairs specialist at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Washington must somehow steer Moscow toward a more toler- ant view of its neighbors' domestic matters.
History, Valenta notes, offers abundant...
allowing real reform to occur in its troubled satellites can Moscow avoid the peripheral flare-ups that threaten to erupt into wider conflict.
"Alternate Futures" Adam Yarmo- Mixed Ideas for linskv and Gregory D. Foster, in Parame-
ters ar arch i983), U.S. Army WarThe Pentagon College, Carlisle Barracks, Pa. 17013.
The new military "reformersu-junior officers, academics, and Sena- tors and Congressmen, notably Senator Gary Hart (D.-Co10.)-all agree that, in both weapons and Pentagon...
Norman Friedman,
in Orbis (Winter 1983), 3508 Market St.,
Revisited Suite 350, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104.
When a sea-skimming Argentine Exocet missile sank the British de- stroyer Sheffield off the Falkland Islands last year, some U.S. defense analysts declared that the incident proved that sophisticated missiles have rendered large warships obsolete.
But Friedman, a Hudson Institute staff member, contends that the lessons for U.S. defense planners are precisely the opposite. The Falk- lands...
A. F. Ehrbar, in Fortune (May 16, 1983),
541 North Fairbanks Ct., Chicago, 111.
60611.
Some economists and politicians worry that high-tech factories and foreign competition will cost millions of American blue-collar workers their jobs over the next several decades. But Ehrbar, a Fortune editor, says such fears are "overblown."
An oft-cited Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, for example,
The Wilson Quar!efi/Autumn 1983
15
PERIODICALS
ECONOMICS, LABOR, & BUSINESS
suggests t...