irst of all I think it is desirable to put "curl up with a book." I despised them. I aside some time for reading-per- have never curled. My physique is not formed haps an evening, or an hour, or half for it. It is a matter of legend that Abraham an hour, or even 15 minutes, but a Lincoln read lying on his stomach in front of time in which to read and do nothing else and the fire; you should try that in order to under- pay no attention to anything but the book. stand the extraordinary...
concourses of today's airports on our way to catch a plane, how many of us pause to think that we are about to undertake an essentially aesthetic and moral experience? Yet only 60 years ago Western culture, high and low, celebrated aviation in just such terms. Hollywood's big studios glamourized the miracle of flight in a spate of star- studded films. Charles Lindbergh acquired the divine sobriquet "the new Christ." And the Modernist architect and aty planner Le Corbusier proclaimed...
sigmund Freud was well-established
but far from famous when he re-
ceived a letter in December 1908
from G. Stanley Hall, a noted Ameri-
can psychologist and the president of Clark
University, inviting him to give a series of in-
troductory lectures on psychoanalysis. The
52-year-old physician would be one of sev-
eral distinguished speakers at a ceremony
marking the 20th anniversary of the Worces-
ter, Massachusetts, institution. It was an excit-
ing opportunity for Freud, but he...
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? -W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"
round the world, rough beasts are busily slouching. They are the nations recently emerged from decades of com- munist misrule, or those on the verge
of similar emergence, while some additional few are escapees from other forms of authoritarian gov- ernance, both of the right and left persuasions. What all have in common, from Russia and Poland to Zambia and Nicaragua,...
ANNE THURSTON
Since the death of Mao Zedong in
1976, China's moribund communist
dynasty has been at least par-
tially revived. But as Deng
Xiaoping, architect of the restor-
ation, approaches his 89th year,
China finds itself on the brink of
a most uncertain future. Anne
Thurston, a veteran China-watcher
recently returned from the
People's Republic, looks at the
puzzles and contradictions of
the present for clues to where Asia's
greatest dragon may head.
communism ha...
At the turn of this century, the Irish-American jour- nalist Finley Peter Dunne wrote a column of politi- cal and social satire for a Chicago newspaper. On
one occasion, he touched on the ancient
world, attributing the following observation
to his character, the sage of Halsted Street,
Mr. Dooley:
I know histhry isn't thrue, Hinnissy, be-
cause it ain't like what I see ivry day in
Halsted Sthreet. If any wan comes along
with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that'll
show me th' people fightin', g...
Un soldat de la liberte
Quand il est par elle exalt6
Vaut mieux a lui seul que cent esclaves
-Theodore Rousseau, 1793
[A soldier of liberty, exalted by her, is worth more than a hundred slaves]
In 1793, Year I of the French Republic, the town of St. Quentin in Picardy changed the name of one of its streets from rue Ste. Catherine to rue Grenadier Malfuson. Malfuson was a "soldier of liberty," one of the volun- teers of 1792, who had died in battle around Lille. To name a street af...
These are uncertain times for the armed forces of the
United States. How could
they not be? With the Cold
War over, the very founda-
tions of our thinking about national security have undergone profound changes. Short of a terrible accident, the likelihood of a nuclear war between major powers is slim. Indeed, wars among any major powers appear unlikely, though ter- rorism and internal wars triggered by eth- nic and religious animosities will be with us for some time, if not forever. More...
America has no literary capi- cesses) every ambitious talent. tal. Its great writers have It was not ever thus. In the late 19th and come from every region and early 20th centuries, some of America's often spent their adult lives greatest writers fled their own country, in in locales hardly known as part at least to get away from what they saw cultural meccas-Oxford, as its provincialism. For the literary expatri- Mississippi, or Amherst, Massachusetts, or ates of that time-Henry James, Edith...
some years ago, I received an ar- ticle from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, entitled "Banja Luka Mon Amour." It was written on the occasion of an earthquake that destroyed much of that mixed Serb, Croat, and Muslim town on the Vrbas River in northern Bosnia. Its author, Nada Curcija-Prodanovic, was a well-known translator of Serbo-Croatian folklore into English. Her article consisted mainly of childhood reminiscences, but what I re-member most was its title. It seemed to me at the time that there...