Winter 1995
Can the Joy of Sports Be Saved?
In Essence
Kevin
C.O'Leary, in Polity (Summer 1994),Thompson Hall, Univ. of Massachusetts, Box 7520, Amherst, Mass. 01003-7520.
In his influential 1909 book, The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly (1869-1930) ar- gued that in urban, industrialized, 20th-cen- tury America, a strong national government was needed to counter the nation's emerging large corporations and to improve the welfare of the average citizen. Hamiltonian govern- ment, he urged, should be used for Jeffersonian ends. His argument provided...
'The Infernal Senate" by Tom Geoghegan, in The New Republic (Nov. 21,1994), 1220 19th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
W.Hays Parks,inProceedings (Sept.1994)'
U.S.Naval Institute, 2062 Generals Highway, Annapolis, Md. 21401.
In October 1991, when U.S. Navy leaders learned that news of the Tailhook debauchery was about to break, they immediately tried to send a strong message: sexual harassment would not be tolerated. In their rush to judg- ment, contends Parks, a retired marine colonel, they actually sent a very different messagmne that ironically helped to ensure that those guilty of criminal wrongdoing at the...
Alan Grob, in Reconstruction (Vol. 2, No. 3,1994), 1563 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, Mass. 02138; "Old 'Quota' Under Attack Ben Gose, in The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 29,1994), 1255 23rd St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037.
Critics of affirmative action seldom object to another departure from the meritocratic ideal: geographic preferences in college ad- missions and scholarships. Yet these quotas have nothing like affirmative action's "mor- ally compelling" justification, argues...
'The Question of Black Crime" John J. DiIulio, Jr., with commentaries by Glenn C. Loury et al., in The Public Interest (Fall 1994), 1112 16th St. N.W., Ste. 530, Washington, D.C. 20036; "The State, Criminal Law, and Racial Discrimination: A Comment" by Randall Kennedy, in Harvard Law Review (April 1994), Gannett House, Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
Believing that America's criminal justice system is stacked against African-Ameri- cans at every turn, many black and white- liberal critics...
Susan S. Bean, in Parabola (Fall 19941,656 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10012.In the familiar photographs, Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) is clad in only a loin- cloth and, sometimes, a chaddar (shawl). The clothes did not exactly make the man, but they certainly helped to make the man the Mahatma (great soul), writes Bean, chief cu- rator of the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.Gandhi's choice of garb, she says, came only after much experience, some of it un- pleasant, with the social and...
Book Reviews
THE REVOLT OF THE ELITES and the Betrayal of Democracy. By Christopher Lasch.Norton. 248 pp. $22
BAMBOULA! The Life and Times of Louis Moreau. Gottschalk. By S. Frederick Starr. Oxford. 564 pp. $35
THE MORAL ANIMAL: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. By Robert Wright. Pantheon. 467 pp. $27.50 THE HUNGRY SOUL: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature. By Leon Kass. FreePress. 248 pp. $24.95
By T. J. Jackson Lears. Basic. 492 pp. $30
By Li Zhisui. With the editorial assistance of Anne F. Thurston. Trans. by Tai Hung-chao. Random House. 682 pp. $30
By Eugene D. Genovese. Harvard. 138 pp. $22.50
By Roberto Calasso. Trans. by William Weaver and Stephen Sartarelli. Harvard. 385 pp. $24.95
By Harold Bloom. Harcourt Brace. 578 pp. $29.95
By Lee Siegel. Univ. of Chicago. 455 pp. $60 (hardback); $19.95 (paper)
By Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Free Press. 845 pp. $30
By Cullen Murphy. Houghton Mifflin. 248 pp. $21.95
By Donald Harman Akenson. Cornell. 573 pp. $35
By Bert Holldobler and Edward 0. Wilson. Harvard. 228 pp. $24.95
Essays
Sports have changed a lot over the past 150 years, but they can tell us a lot about who we are and what we want to be.
Technology and sports have become inseparable, but will professional advances ruin the games?
Despite the well publicized dangers, the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs has permanently altered the sports landscape.
[Introduction to articles on sports]
William J. Baker, a historian at the University of Maine, is narrated with similar flair and illustrated with an equally fascinating set of images. Here, too, one encounters every conceivable kind of athlete, from gladiators to golfers. Both authors are perceptive analysts of sports as thrilling demonstrations of extraordinary physical skill and prowess, and both also have an informed sense of the ritual contexts and aesthetic appeal of sports.
Vietnam's long struggle for independence seemed to end 20 years ago. Today, Communist leaders, having opened their country to the world, are riding the tiger of economic reform while trying to keep a tight grip on political power.
America's victory in the Persian Gulf War seemed a resounding confirmation of conventional U.S. military thought. Yet to cope with a world in which terrorists and warlords pose as great a challenge as massed armies, a radical revision of military thinking is essential.
One of America's finer novelists shows how the reading of books "brings us together in a rare community of joy."
f elite bashing has become a national
pastime-possibly the national pastime,
in the absence of baseball-no one today
appears to be playing the game better than Republican politicians. For their recent triumph at the polls at least some credit should go to skills they've been honing ever since the Reagan Revolution got under way in the early 1980s.
But Democrats have little room to com- plain. When the chips are down-and that's fairly often-these past masters of the game still take swipes a...
of Louis Edward Sissman has not lacked admirers, among whom perhaps the most dedicated has been Peter Davi- son, his editor at what was then Atlantic-Little Brown and him- self a poet. Others include Hilton Kramer, James Dickey, Howard Moss, and S. J. Perelman, who enthusiastically declared: "Unquestionably a major poet and a man of dazzling talent. Sissman's range of evocation, his wit, and his sensitivity would clearly have appealed to T. S. Eliot, whose influence is manifest."Perelman...
