PERIODICALS
ARTS&LETTERS
"How Good is Gabriel Garcia Marquez?"
Flawed Marvels Joseph Epstein, in Commentary (May 1983), 165 East 56th St., New York, N.Y.
10022.
Last year, Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, won the Nobel Prize in literature at the youthful age of 54. Is he already a great writer, asks Epstein, editor of the American Scholar, or just a very talented one?
Since it first appeared in 1967, One Hundred Years of S...
the left- ist Mujahedeen-al-Khalq that took the lives of several senior govern- ment officials.
Systematic repression of dissent-there have been 4,500 documented executions since Khomeini took power in 1979-has been vital to the regime's survival. Another key: effective "state-building." Khomeini quickly replaced the Shah's bureaucrats with loyalists; he established new quasi-governmental organizations, such as the 150,000-man Revo- lutionary Guards and thousands of neighborhood watch...
Geoffrey Swedish Stew Smith, in Journal of the Institute for So-
cioeconomic Studies (Sprine 1983). Air-
port Rd., White plain;, ~.~.*10604.
In Sweden, have they gone about as far as they can go?
The nation's Social Democratic party ruled without interruption for 44 years (1932-76) as it gradually expanded the welfare state. Since its return to power late last year, writes Smith, a London Times columnist, the search for new initiatives has forced it to contemplate programs considered beyond...
Everett Carl1 Ladd,
in Public Opinion (Dec.-Jan. 1983), Ameri-
Choosing can Enterprise Institute, 1150 17th St.
N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Parsing the results of elections and public opinion surveys to divine whether the voters are moving Left or Right is a hallowed pastime among Washington pundits and elected officials. It is also futile, adds Ladd, a University of Connecticut political scientist.
Massive contradictions in poll results, he argues, show that Ameri- cans are abandoning...
the new "post-ideological" electorate, Ladd predicts. But innovative politicians will find the voters willing to give a fair hearing to thoughtful prescriptions for the nation's ills.
"Federal Fraud, Waste, and Abuse:
One Step Forward, Causes and Responses" Thomas F.
Eagleton and Ira S.Shapiro, in Journal of
One Step Back the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies
(Winter 1982/83), Airport Rd., White Plains, N.Y. 10604.
For years, nobody in Congress or the executive branch...
Arthur Schle- Eisenhower's singer, Jr., in Reviews in American History ew Look (Mar. 1983), Johns Hopkins, 34th and
Charles, Baltimore, Md. 21218.
Dwight D. Eisenhower's long-denigrated Presidency (1953-61) is sud- denly rising in scholars' esteem.
As Schlesinger, a City University of New York historian, notes, "the successive faults of Eisenhower's successors-activism, excess, crook- edness, mediocrity, blah-have given his virtues new value." And the diaries and official papers from...
PERIODICALS
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
see no reason why [nuclear weapons] shouldn't be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else."
Moreover, Schlesinger adds, Eisenhower authorized a host of Central Intelligence Agency covert operations-backing coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) and organizing the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Castro's Cuba-that ultimately damaged U .S. interests.
As to the revisionists' claims that Eisenhower harbored a grand strategy that he...
Don-ald S. Zagoria, in Foreign Affairs (Spring 1983), PO. Box 2515, ~oulder,~01;. 8032 1.
The slowly ripening detente between Moscow and Beijing, a source of some anxiety in Washington, does not pose a serious threat to the West.
The two Communist powers have been at odds over ideological and security issues since the late 1950s, when China insisted on building its own nuclear weapons. Even as they move toward detente, writes Zago- ria, a Hunter College political scientist, mutual fears will keep...
Earl C. Ravcnal, in The New York Times Mugazi~ze (March 6, 1983), 229
America West 43rd St., New York, N.Y. 10036.
Budget-minded members of Congress who favor trimming Pentagon outlays are whittling while Rome burns. The only way to control de- fense spending and shore up the ailing U.S. economy is to abandon the 35-year-old U.S. strategy of "containing" Soviet global expansion.
So argues Ravenal, professor of international relations at George- town University. The Reagan administration's...
Stephen D. Wrage, in SAIS Rcvit~v Human Rights (Winter-Spring 1983), 1740 Massachu-
setts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
The Reagan administration's "quiet diplomacy" on human rights has accomplished little; President Jimmy Carter's approach was vigorous, noisy, but usually fruitless. Between the two, writes Wrage, a George- town University lecturer on international affairs, lies the route to an ef- fective U.S. human rights policy.
The Carter administration claimed, justifiably,...