actually existed. Another three decades elapsed before they be- gan to exploit the colony systemati- cally. In 1532, the first town was established at Siio Vicente. Cattle and sugar cane were introduced, and a sugar mill was built.
the 1570s, when Pero de Magal- hiies de Gandavo toured Brazil's sugar-producing provinces, he counted some 60 mills and estimated the colo- ny's sugar exports at one million pounds a year. His detailed chronicle is translated as The Histories of Brazil (1922; Longwood,...
THE SUBURBS OF
CAMELOT
Has poetry ceased to matter to most Americans? And if it has, should the blame be placed on the poets, the reading public, or the times? Here critic Frank McConnell considers the state of contemporary American poetry and describes the efforts of some of our better poets to make their art matter once again.
by Frank D.McConnell
"The suburbs of Camelot"-one may as well admit, at the outset, that the poet in America has really never gotten closer to the center o...
America's leaders.
MISADVENTURE REVISITED
Richard K. Betts
Each November 22nd, representatives of the U.S. Army Special Forces-the Green Berets-join members of the Ken- nedy family at a memorial ceremony at President John F. Ken-nedy's grave. This joint tribute symbolizes the ambiguous legacy of the U.S. venture in Vietnam. Kennedy had personally championed the Green Berets as an elite vanguard combating Communist revolution and subversion in the Third World. But just four years after th...
Each November 22nd, representatives of the U.S. Army Special Forces-the Green Berets-join members of the Ken- nedy family at a memorial ceremony at President John F. Ken-nedy's grave. This joint tribute symbolizes the ambiguous legacy of the U.S. venture in Vietnam. Kennedy had personally championed the Green Berets as an elite vanguard combating Communist revolution and subversion in the Third World. But just four years after the President's assassination, his brothers Robert and Edward had moved...
As the year 1965 began, Ho Chi Minh, his Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, and the other members of the ruling Politburo in Hanoi saw triumph ahead. The long-sought goal of unifica- tion of North and South under the Con~munist banner would be achieved during the next twelve months. Broadcasting the lead- ership's annual State message, Radio Hanoi did not say that 1965 would be a "year of victories,' or of "moving toward vic- tory." It said flatly "the year of victory."
This...
A story made the rounds of the Army during the closing days of the Vietnam War. When the Nixon administration took over in 1969, so the story goes, Pentagon officials fed all the data on North Vietnam and the United States into a computer: popu- lation, gross national product, manufacturing capacity, size of the armed forces, and the like. The computer was then asked: "When will we win?" It took only a moment to answer: "You won in 1964!"
From the American professional soldier's...
Washington Post veteran Don Ober- dorfer, who concluded, as most historians do now, that the Commu- nists' spectacular 1968 Tet Offensive was a defeat for Hanoi in South Viet- nam, even as it demoralized political Washington. In The Unmaking of a President (19771, Herbert Schandler, a retired Army colonel and one of the authors of the Pentagon Papers, fol-lowed up with a scholarly, eye- opening dissection of Washington decision-making during the hectic February-March $968 period. An- other Postman,...
public agencies and private institutions
"Prospects for Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund."
Staff Memorandum, Congressional Budget Office, U.S. Congress, Washington,
-
D.C. 20402.22 pp.
Even as Congress celebrates the ap- parent resolution of the Social Secu- rity crisis, it may have to start worrying about another impending
U.S. trust fund bankruptcy.
According to the staff of the Con- gressional Budget Office (CBO), Medi- care (health insurance for the elderly and dis...
LECTIONS
Galileo's Science
And the Trial of 1633
"Nature .. . is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her." Thus did Galileo argue in 1615 for the authority of science over that of Scripture in the physical world. The Catholic Church's 1633 condemnation of Galileo is popularly seen as the response of theological dogmatism. But the issue debated by scholars today is whether Galileo actually proved that the Earth revolves around the sun. Here, as he a...
I guess I should have known I would one day write biography when, at the age of 10 or so, I discovered that the heroes I most craved to meet were not taxpaying residents of Nairobi, Kenya.
Alexander the Great, Tom Sawyer, Winston Churchill, and test pilot Chuck Yeager lived in "a world else- where," and seemed unlikely to visit mine, except perhaps on safari. Lacking their company, I was forced to improvise novels in which tow- headed aviators fought confusedly with Prime Ministers we...