Edited by Lewis M.
Dabney. Penguin,
1983.647 pp. $6.95
Essays
One of the most popular Wilson Quarterly essays ever (and by far the funniest) was Anders Henriksson’s brief history of Europe as told through the peculiar observations he had culled from papers written by college freshmen he had taught in Canada. As we wrote in introducing the piece in the Spring 1983 issue, paraphrasing George Santayana, “Those who forget history are condemned to mangle it.”
Lech Walesa, who had been involved in the 1970 and 1976 disturbances in Poland, Solidarity received broad support from Western labor unions -and over S185,OOO /rowthe AFL-CIO.
The Wilson QuarterlyISpriizg 1983
48
"Humanity must rejoice and glory when it considers the change in Poland." The sentiments of Britain's Edmund Burke were echoed many Western politicians during the 16-month hey- day in 1980-81 of the independent trade union Solidarity. Burke was referring to Poland's adoption...
's 13 million workers. Led by Lech Walesa, who had been involved in the 1970 and 1976 disturbances in Poland, Solidarity received broad support from Western labor unions -and over S185,OOO /rowthe AFL-CIO.
The Wilson QuarterlyISpriizg 1983
48
"Humanity must rejoice and glory when it considers the change in Poland." The sentiments of Britain's Edmund Burke were echoed by many Western politicians during the 16-month hey- day in 1980-81 of the independent trade union Solidarity. Burke...
's economy was in serious trouble. With the end of the false prosperity of the early 1970s, shortages of meat, flour, sugar, and other staples had become widespread. Indus- trial productivity was low, the rate of economic growth had fur- ther declined, and the country was burdened with a massive external debt. The agricultural sector, once one of Poland's great strengths, was in disarray.
Since the summer of 1980, the situation has only deterio- rated. Rationing is in force, and as mundane an item...
AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE
by Artur Mdzyrzecki
Fragments from a notebook.
<$> No notes, no clippings, no folders filled with manuscripts. All of that has remained in Warsaw, Marszatkowska Street, in my room piled with books. Despair and relief. To be honest, I was not capable of read- ing those pages, so densely covered with writing, that no longer interest me-and for a reason. Once again the earth had trembled under our feet, and once again one had to start from scratch.
<S> My arm i...
"I wish to be called a citizen of the world," wrote Desiderius Erasmus in 1522. Every country in Western Europe tried to claim as its own Erasmus of Rotterdam, the peripatetic man of letters who shunned the public spotlight in favor of a quiet study- wherever he could find it. In 1974, the University of Toronto Press launched an effort to translate into English the complete Latin works of this prodigiously productive scholar. Nine volumes of The Collected Works of Erasmus, including...
the Institute for Contemporary Studies, Harvard's James Q. Wil-son stresses that "we offer no 'magic bullet' that will produce safe streets or decent people." What Wilson and his 10 contributors do offer is some fresh thinking. They also puncture a few strong myths. We draw from their work in the essays that follow on crime trends and types of offenders, on the criminal justice sys-
tem, and on the relationship of crime to family life.
TRENDS AND TARGETS
Jan M. Chaiken and Marcia R....
Fifty years ago, crime was not regarded by the average ur- ban American as a chronic threat to his family and his property.
The wanton disorder in U.S. cities during the last half of the
19th century had steadily declined. Immigrants, impoverished
but more or less peaceable, had occupied once-dangerous hell-
holes, places like Buffalo's Canal Street or Manhattan's notori-
ous Five Points. There were still areas, of course, in both town
and country, that had a deservedly evil reputation. H...