Donald Hall, in The American Scholar (Winter 1984-85). 181 1 Q St. N.W., washington, D.C. 20009:
When the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats toured the American college circuit during the 1930s, he did not read his verse aloud. In- stead, he delivered lectures on "Three Great Irishmen."
Poetry just was not commonly read aloud. Today, says Hall, himself a poet, things are different. The public reading "has become the chief form of publication for American poets. Annually, hundreds...
its full title,.Awangernent in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother.
"From Clapham to Bloomsbury : A Gene-A Dead End alogy of Morals" Gertrude Himmel-
farb, in Commentary (Feb. 1985), 165 East In Bloornsbury 56th St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
The Bloomsbury group is enshrined in the literary imagination as an early 20th-century coterie of brilliant and somewhat eccentric British artists, writers, and intellectuals. Himmelfarb, a historian at New York's City University, sees...
stealth."
Earlier "reform-mongers" include Japan's 19th-century Meiji Em- peror, Turkey's Kemal Ataturk, and France's Charles de Gaulle: Ac- cording to Stultz, such reformers "rig" the political process "in such a way that 'progressives' think they are choosing between the prof- fered reforms and the status quo, while 'conservatives' concurrently are persuaded to see the choice as between what is being suggested and revolution."
Is that what President P. W. Botha...
Leigh H.Divided Cyprus Bruce, in Foreign Policy (Spring 1985),
P.O. Box984, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11737.
Tiny Cyprus is one of the modern world's perennial trouble spots. Eleven years after Turkish troops invaded and carved out a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the situation is as volatile as ever, reports Bruce, a Christian Science Monitor correspondent.
Settled Greeks, the island was taken over by the Ottoman Empire in 1571 and passed into British hands in 1878. Under Ottoman rule, Turkish settlers arrived...
then, Makarios favored an indepen- dent Cyprus rather than union with Greece, and the newly installed military junta in Athens backed General Grivas's attempts to under- mine his old ally. In July 1974, pro-enosis, Greek-backed forces in Cy- prus toppled Makarios, sparking Turkey's military invasion.
Stalemate has prevailed ever since. Some 30,000 Turkish troops now occupy about a third of the island. Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denk- tash is busily engaged in establishing an independent state;...
1978 there were 11 1. Cou-ples who produce, say, three sons stop having children, but those with three daughters continue until they get boys.
The Freeds have little faith that either further economic progress or the creation of a social security program would stem India's population growth. "Indians do not believe that the government or anyone but their sons will take care of them when they are old." Yet, if Indians do not change voluntarily, the Freeds say, the government may feel com-...
James H. Hut-
son, in Reviews in American History (Dec.
ounders 1984), Johns Hopkins University Press, Whitehead Hall, 34th & Charles Sts., Baltimore, Md. 21218.
Nearly 200 years after the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention, American historians still do not agree on what they were "really" up to.
Historians have spun conflicting theories about the founding of the Republic since the Constitution was ratified in 1789. Until recently, writes...
Supreme Court interpretations of the Con- stitution, begat no new breed of revisionists. The field today belongs to scholars who, having discredited "the Beard thesis," now labor in "per- plexity and muddle."
"The Politics of Moral Vision" Michael
Lerner, in Commonweal (Jan. 1 1, 1985),
232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 1001 6.
Two decades ago, Governor Ronald Reagan rose to national promi- nence by cracking down on California's campus radicals. Last year, President...
Steven Kel- man, in The Public Interest (winter 1985), 20th & Northampton Sts., Easton, Pa. 18042.
In January 1984, the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control
(a.k.a. the Grace Commission) made a big splash in the newspapers when it reported that, during the previous three years alone, Washing- ton bureaucrats had wasted $424 billion.
Americans love to hear this kind of "bad" news, says Kelman, who teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. It confirms their conviction...
John W. Sloan, in Presidential Studies Quarterly (Winter 1985), Center for the Study of the Presidency, 208 East 75th St., New York,
N.Y. 10021.
When economists try to explain what caused America's alarming out- break of inflation during the 1970s, they point their fingers first at Arab oil sheiks, then at President Lyndon B. Johnson.
failing to increase federal taxes soon enough during the mid-1960s to cover the growing costs of the Vietnam War, they argue, LBJ allowed the US. economy to overheat,...