By Hugh Thomas.
Harper, 1981.720 pp. $10.50
Selected and retold by Italo Calvino.
Pantheon, 1981.763pp. $9.95
Albrecht Diver. "It is not good that the man should be alone," said the Lord (Genesis 2:18). The solution: woman. De- spite the Lord's intentioizs, the sexes' first encounterwas not a totalsuccess.
The most perfectly organized societies in nature are sexless ones, or those where sex differences have been minimized or somehow suppressed. In America, during the turbulent late 1960s and '70s, feminists began to suggest, in effect, that our own complicated society ought to move in that direction....
NaiionalGallery ofArt, Waslingion, D.C. Rosenwald Collection.
Adam and Eve (1504), by Albrecht Diver. "It is not good that the man should be alone," said the Lord (Genesis 2:18). The solution: woman. De- spite the Lord's intentioizs, the sexes' first encounterwas not a totalsuccess.
The most perfectly organized societies in nature are sexless ones, or those where sex differences have been minimized or somehow suppressed. In America, during the turbulent late 1960s and '70s, feminists began...
do differ, biologically, cog- nitively, and behaviorally, no one disputes-although such dif- ferences, it must be stressed, are usually not absolute but appar- ent only as averages when groups of men and women are com- pared. Yet, as psychologist Jeanette McGlone writes, "Questions such as 'Why?' and 'Does it matter?' remain unanswered."
Those two questions, of course, are what the fuss is all about. The staunchest believer in equal opportunities for both sexes will, if he or she is...
may in- voke the law, it is intriguing to discover that eight of the opin- ions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court during the term ending in 1981 turned directly on issues of gender.
In fiscal year 1981, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed 129 sex discrimination suits and processed 2,303 complaints lodged under the Equal Pay Act. Several hun- dred "palimony" suits were working their way through the courts. An Oregon man was charged by his wife with rape (but acquitted)....
James Thurber and E. B. White in Is Sex Necessary? (Harper, 1929; 1975, paper; Queen's House, 1977, cloth): "While the urge to eat is a personal matter which concerns no one but the person hungry . . . the sex urge involves, for its true expression, an- other individual. It is this 'other indi- vidual' that causes all the trouble."
The chief focus of historian Carl Degler's At Odds (Oxford, 1980) is on the rnodus vivendi that evolved be- tween the sexes during the 19th and early 20th...
One of Jefferson's most famous propositions, written in Paris in September 1789,was introduced in a letter to his fellow Virginian James Madison. The question he raised was "whether one generation of men has a right to bind another." His answer was an emphatic no: "the earth belongs in usufruct to the living."
Each generation enjoys the use of its property, while alive. The laws of the society may permit such property to be be- queathed to those still living. But, he believed,...
ese pottery, highly prized abroad, was one of the country's first export products.
Since 1973, when most Western economies were first becalmed rising oil prices, Japan's star has seemed to shine brighter than ever before. But many Americans forget that Japan's econ- omy has outperformed most others during much of this century. If there is a secret to this success, it is the Japanese ability to adapt quickly to new conditions and the Tokyo government's encouragement of change. Here, historian Peter...