During the early
18th centu y, the
heyday of Anglo-
American piracy, two
women, Anne Bonny
and May Read,
joined the crew of
Calico Jack Rackam,
a notorious
Caribbean pirate.
As historian
Marcus Rediker
relates, their choice
was not unique.
It placed them
in the company of
others of their
gender~sailors,
soldiers, adventurers-
who "seized liberty"
from society
by disguising
themselves as men.
Mary Read
102 WQ AUTUMN 1993
Sailed the Seen
In late 1720 Jamaica's most...
phone from his cell! thanks to an arrangement with the author- ities). The moderator uses her microphone to conduct a chamber symphony of woe, before an audience which has long since learned to listen for the familiar notes and which is prepared, when called upon, to work its own
tell the bastards anything." He was on the right track. We seem determined that the whole na- tion should have the privacy of a military bar- racks. Supreme Court decisions turn precari- ously on invocation of a constitutional...
JOHN HOOPER
in Madrid is likely to see these days is a pair of immense office towers standing on either side of the northern entrance to the city. They dominate the skyline from countless angles and can be glimpsed from miles away across Spain's arid central tableland, the rneseta. What makes them remarkable is not so much that they reach 27 stories into the sky but that they tilt precariously toward each other-at angles nearlythreetimesasprecipitousasthe one at which the Tower of Pisa famously...
in Madrid is likely to see these days is a pair of immense office towers standing on either side of the northern entrance to the city. They dominate the skyline from countless angles and can be glimpsed from miles away across Spain's arid central tableland, the rneseta. What makes them remarkable is not so much that they reach 27 stories into the sky but that they tilt precariously toward each other-at angles nearlythreetimesasprecipitousasthe one at which the Tower of Pisa famously leans.
Unlike...
which we usually chart Western Euro- pean history-Renaissance and Reformation, Enlightenment and Industrialization-seem largely inapplicable to Spain. Its tradition has been one of isolationism driven some form of authoritarian rule and stiffened by a powerful Catholic Church. This has earned Spain a repu- tation for stagnation and backwardness, one that for much of its history it has deserved.
But Spain has not always lagged behind its neighbors to the northeast. It was, after all, the first n...
DOUGLAS GOMERY
It was a defining moment in American history, albeit one run over and over, like an episode of "Star Trek." Into the tidy living room of a young family's subur- ban home, usually just days before Christmas, came the electronic marvel. The old ma- hogany radio set, already seeming a bit an- tique, was shoved into a corner, and two hefty deliverymen struggled to position the bulky new console across from the couch, between the easy chairs. Everyone gathered around as the...
It was a defining moment in American history, albeit one run over and over, like an episode of "Star Trek." Into the tidy living room of a young family's subur- ban home, usually just days before Christmas, came the electronic marvel. The old ma- hogany radio set, already seeming a bit an- tique, was shoved into a corner, and two hefty deliverymen struggled to position the bulky new console across from the couch, between the easy chairs. Everyone gathered around as the first test pattern...
Today, there is no getting away from the electronic hearthland. Commen- tators may routinely misinterpret one of the more widely circulated statistics about television-that the average household has a set on more than seven hours per day-to mean that the average person watches that amount. (It is no mere pedantic detail to note that a set being on does not mean that it is being watched.) But even the correct figure of four hours a day is nothing to trifle with. Television watching is second only...
Ibegin with a true story. In 1974 I was having coffee in the English department lounge at Northwestern University when two of my colleagues-a younger, untenured man and an older, tenured woman-entered in mid-conversation.
"Oh, no," the woman was saying, "I just won't have a television in my apartment. I know there are some good things on it, espe- cially on public broadcasting. But so much of it is just garbage!"
My younger friend laughed. "Joke's on you, then,"...
Across the centuries that have elapsed since he lived in northern China and lectured to a small group of followers on ethics and ritual, the ideas of Confucius have had a pow- erful resonance. Soon after hisdeath in 476 B.c., a small number of these followers dedicated themselves to recording what they codd re- member of his teachings and to preserving the texts of history and poetry that he was alleged to have edited. In the fourth and third centu- ries B.c., several distinguished philosophers...