Very little human activity ever proves of much consequence in the anarchic scheme of history, and, whether fortunate or not, the fact is nonetheless irksome; men do not like to be told that they are plowing the waves.
The Roman noet Horace ventured one solution: Through
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art, he claimed, one could erect a monument "more permanent than bronzeupand he was right, at least in his own case. But today men are building a collective, not an individual, monu- ment: the edifice of scientific...
Dusko Doder
Perhaps understandably, Yugoslavia's image in the West has never been sharply defined. Most Americans know little more about the country than that Marshal Tito fought the Nazis, defied Stalin, and in 1948 pulled out of the Soviet bloc. But even the Yugoslavs have a blurred conception of themselves. In ethnic terms, there is no such thing as a Yugoslav. There are Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and many other "nationalities." Although they share a common South (or Yugo)...
Perhaps understandably, Yugoslavia's image in the West has never been sharply defined. Most Americans know little more about the country than that Marshal Tito fought the Nazis, defied Stalin, and in 1948 pulled out of the Soviet bloc. But even the Yugoslavs have a blurred conception of themselves. In ethnic terms, there is no such thing as a Yugoslav. There are Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and many other "nationalities." Although they share a common South (or Yugo) Slav origin,...
's significance now? What will it be after Tito? Conventional answers usually point to the country's anomalous international position-neither Eastern nor West- ern, neither capitalist nor (in the Soviet sense) communist, neither neutral nor satellite. But these are descriptive cliches, not answers.
A real analysis of Yugoslavia's importance must focus on more tangible factors: on its geographical position, its volatile ethnic situation, its much-touted internal system of "self- management,"...
. The vitality of its people and the primi- tive countryside captured her imagina- tion. She went on to immerse herself in the research for BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON: A Journey Through Yugoslavia (Viking, 1941). Her 1,180-page book remained in print for 33 years and is still available in most libraries. It may be the best book ever written about Yugo- slavia.
Dame Rebecca's rich, old-fashioned mixture of travelogue, cultural history, and political reportage builds slowly but once begun is hard...
Armstead L. Robinson
The first Reconstruction was one of the most critical and turbulent episodes in the American experience. Few periods in the nation's history have produced greater controversy or left a greater legacy of unresolved social issues to afflict future gener- ations.
The postwar period-from General Robert E. Lee's surren- der at Appomattox in April 1865 through President Rutherford
B. Hayes's inauguration in March 1877-was marked bitter partisan politics. In essence, the recurring...
The first Reconstruction was one of the most critical and turbulent episodes in the American experience. Few periods in the nation's history have produced greater controversy or left a greater legacy of unresolved social issues to afflict future gener- ations.
The postwar period-from General Robert E. Lee's surren- der at Appomattox in April 1865 through President Rutherford
B. Hayes's inauguration in March 1877-was marked by bitter partisan politics. In essence, the recurring question was how...
By April 1865, the Southern planters' dreams of perpetuat- ing slavery in an independent republic had vanished. Secession had cost the South a quarter of a million men dead and nearly $3 billion in slave property when three and a half million black laborers were freed. As some Southern anti-Secessionists had prophesied, the Civil War ended in the destruction of the "pecul- iar institution" it was intended to make secure.
Before Appomattox, the planters had identified the South's entire...
Eight or nine years ago, during a classroom discussion of the federal government's retreat in the 1870s from its commit- ment to protect black civil and political rights in the South, a student offered a remark that remains etched in my memory. "This time," he said, "the story will be different." Having grown up during the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, his genera- tion, he asserted, was "more enlightened" than its forebears and would make sure that no backsliding...
the Literary Guild-of Claude G. Bowers'
THE TRAGIC ERA: The Revolution after Lincoln (Houghton Mifflin, 1929, cloth; 1930, paper), the Southern view reached its widest audience.
To rebut Bowers' popular anti-Negro, antiradical, anticarpetbagger, anti-scalawag book, black historian W. E. B. Du Bois six years later published his ground-breaking work, BLACK RECON- STRUCTION (Harcourt, 1935; Kraus re- print, 1976).
Du Bois's radically different-some thought alarmingly radical-interpreta- tion garnered...