In Essence

In Essence | Spring 1992
Japanese Junk

Phyllis Austin, in Garbage (Nov.-Dec. 1991), Old House Journal Corp., 2 Main St., Gloucester, Mass. 01930.

First in autos, first in TVs, and first in the management of solid waste as well. That is the view of a number of environmentalists who have studied Japan and estimate that the island nation recycles about 50 per- cent of its solid waste. After a visit to Ja- pan, however, journalist Austin reports the reality there is far less rosy.
Second only to the United States as a garbage producer, J...

In Essence | Spring 1992
Death Begins At 85?

Phyllis Austin, in Garbage (Nov.-Dec. 1991), Old House Journal Corp., 2 Main St., Gloucester, Mass. 01930.

First in autos, first in TVs, and first in the management of solid waste as well. That is the view of a number of environmentalists who have studied Japan and estimate that the island nation recycles about 50 per- cent of its solid waste. After a visit to Ja- pan, however, journalist Austin reports the reality there is far less rosy.
Second only to the United States as a garbage producer, J...

In Essence | Spring 1992
Corruption And Democracy

many more things, notably infant mortality, than just the survival of more people beyond 85. There may be a natural limit to life, but it is not necessarily 85.
Indeed, University of Minnesota demog-

ARTS & LETTERS

rapher James Vaupel has scrutinized un- usually accurate Swedish data on 85-year- olds and found drastic improvements in remaining life expectancy during the past 50 years. The same is true for Swedes as old as 100. If there is a biological limit to life, Vaupel suggests, it m...

In Essence | Spring 1992
Inventing Leadbelly

Beniamin Filene. in American Quarterly (Dec. 1991), Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 701 W. 40th St., Baltimore, Md. 2121 1.
Leadbelly, the black singer and guitarist among the most important of America's (1889-1949) who is now considered folk musicians, was first thrust into the
WQ SPRING 1992
129

-. XRIODICALS

musical limelight John Lomax and his son, Alan. During the 1930s and early '40s, the Lomaxes traveled tens of thousands of miles and made thousands of recordings for the Library of Congress of...

In Essence | Spring 1992
Aliens Capture Sci-Fi Literature

John Lomax and his son, Alan. During the 1930s and early '40s, the Lomaxes traveled tens of thousands of miles and made thousands of recordings for the Library of Congress of obscure songs and singers. In time they won ac- claim for preserving America's endan- gered folk-music heritage. What has not been understood, says Filene, a Yale grad- uate student, is how much their personal vision, shaped the left-wing politics of the period, helped to define the very "tra- dition" they were purportedly...

In Essence | Spring 1992
A Different Sort Of Welcome

"hack" writers rather than "name" authors.
The popularity of sci-fi movies and TV

OTHER NATIONS
shows has been of little help to writers of original science fiction, Disch says. Most hit sci-fi movies of recent years have been written "director-writer-producer teams who have dealt with [science fic- tion] as a pool of imagery, tropes, and plots in the public domain, which can be cobbled together as well by one creative team asby another."
Many veteran science-fiction w...

In Essence | Spring 1992
Africa's New Democracies

overwhelming margins in some areas with heavy concentrations of im- migrants-has achieved a national importance that a similar extremist party in the United States would find hard to win. Ethnic and racial concerns play no small role in American poli- tics, of course, but "the politics of integration or ex- clusion" in France, Horo-

Jean-Marie Le Pen, of the anti-immigrant Front National, was him- witz says, has "a bluntness self a key issue in 1988 elections in which Francois M...

In Essence | Winter 1992
Learning from Communism's Fall

A SL~IJ~J
of Recent Articles

From its birth in 1917 until its death last summer, Soviet communism had a pro-found impact on Western political thought and behavior. The Soviet Union was not just another nation, but history's first fully "socialist" society. The Russian Revolu- tion, Martin Malia, a professor of Russian history at Berkeley, notes in Commentary (Oct. 1991), became "the great polarizing event in 20th-century politics," turning the division between Left and R...

In Essence | Winter 1992
Dry Rot?

? gundi (Fall 1991), Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

In the very hour of its greatest triumph, in the very nation that has been its champion, liberal capitalism is in an alarming state of decay. "[Tlhe signs of impending break- down are unmistakable," warns Lasch, an iconoclastic historian and author of The True and Only Heaven (1991). "Drugs, crime, and gang wars are making our cit- ies uninhabitable. Our school svstem is in a state of collapse. Our [political] parties a...

In Essence | Winter 1992
Stressing The Negative

IODICALS
thought, would overcome the individual man's selfishness. Today, even "the higher selfishness of marriage and parenthood" is losing its influence.
"Liberalism promised progress, abun- dance, and above all privacy. The freedom to live as you please, think and worship as you please-this privatization of the good life was liberalism's greatest appeal. Hav- ing set definite limits to the powers of the state, at the same time relieving individ- uals of most of their civic obligations,...

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