Car- lisle Ford Runge, in The Journal of Con- temporary Studies (Winter 1984), Transaction Periodicals Consortium. Dept. 541, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903.
The Reagan administration's efforts to "privatize" large tracts of feder- ally owned land auctioning it off to individuals and corporations strike some critics as a sellout to "special interests."
In fact, says Runge, a University of Minnesota economist, "privatiza- tion" is chiefly motivated by...
natural gas, but methanol or synthetic gas can also be used. The cells are enormously efficient. They capture about 40 percent of the energy in natural gas; conventional gas tur- bines, contrast, achieve only 30 percent efficiency.
A fuel cell provided electricity and drinking water for the two U.S. as- tronauts who flew Gemini V in 1965, but there have been problems bringing the technology down to earth. A small demonstration plant in New York City is already a year late for start up thanks to...
Dave Kehr,
in American Film (May 1984), American
Film Institute, Box 966, Farmingdale,
N.Y. 11737.
Although Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers might not consider them wor- thy of the name, three of Hollywood's most successful movies last year-Flashdance, Staying Alive, Yentl-were musicals.
Movie musicals have changed drastically over the years, notes Kehr, film critic for the Chicago Reader. During the "golden age," from Monte Carlo in 1930 to My Fair Lady in 1964, the hallmark of the...
Christopher Clausen,
in The Georgia Review (Spring 1984), Uni-
versity of Georgia, Athens, Ga. 30602.
Sherlock Holmes surely would have enjoyed unraveling the mysteries of his own existence.
Starting with A Study in Scarlet, in 1887, author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) made a career for his famous character that spanned three other novels and 56 short stories over 40 years. The Holmes canon cov- ers so much ground, writes Clausen, who teaches at the Virginia Poly- technic Institute, that it...
Christopher Clausen,
in The Georgia Review (Spring 1984), Uni-
versity of Georgia, Athens, Ga. 30602.
Sherlock Holmes surely would have enjoyed unraveling the mysteries of his own existence.
Starting with A Study in Scarlet, in 1887, author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) made a career for his famous character that spanned three other novels and 56 short stories over 40 years. The Holmes canon cov- ers so much ground, writes Clausen, who teaches at the Virginia Poly- technic Institute, that it...
PERIODICALS
ARTS & LETTERS
complains, "there just isn't much new opera to be seen." Among the 87 opera companies that make up OPERA America, opera's equivalent of a national trade association, the most frequently performed work during the 1981-82 season was Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, written in 1851. Of the 47 operas that were performed at least 10 times during the season, only 13 were creations of the 20th century (and six of those were Puc- cini operas from the early 1900s).
A l...
an efflores- cence in the arts. "The identity of a people and of a civilization is re- flected and concentrated" in culture, Kundera writes. "If this identity is threatened with extinction, cultural life grows correspondingly more intense."
But even as culture was increasing in importance in captive Central Europe, it was declining in Western Europe. Indeed, Kundera be- lieves, the mass-communications media have supplanted culture there: Sophisticated Western Europeans now discuss...
MacGre- And Germany gor Knox, in Journal of Modem History
(Mar. 1984), University of Chicago Press,
P.O. Box 37005, Chicago, 111.60637.
Among scholars, decades of debate have made it harder to see what Adolf Hitler's Germany and Benito Mussolini's Italy had in common and what distinguished their fascism from the other major totalitarian ideology of the 20th century-Marxism.
Knox, a University of Rochester historian, says that the confusion arises because scholars refuse to take the two dictators...
Phil Duncan, in Congressional Quiet inCongress Quarterly Weekly Report (Mar. 24, 1984),
1414 22nd St. N.W., Washington. D.C. 20037.
In the 1980 elections, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives suffered a dramatic loss of 33 seats. Two years later it was the Republi- cans' turn to be ambushed: They lost 26 seats. Duncan, a Congressional Quarterly staff writer, predicts that 1984 will provide both parties a respite from all the excitement.
There are a number of reasons for the eerie calm...
Irwin Ross, in Fortune (Feb. 20, 1984), 541 North Fairbanks Ct., Chicago, 111.
Welfare? 60611.
If anybody in Washington is still trying to find fat in the federal budget, he need look no farther than just across the Potomac, to Arlington County, Virginia.
Ross, a Fortune writer, says that while congressional budget-cutters eye Washington's massive welfare and defense outlays, generous fed- eral aid to state and local governments escapes attention. Those gov- ernments "are generally in...