Spring 1987
The Constitution
In Essence
PERIODICALS
Reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and abroad
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
15
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
31
FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE
19
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
34
ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS 23
RESOURCES & ENVIRONMENT 37
SOCIETY
26
ARTS & LETTERS
39
PRESS & TELEVISION
30
...
itself, supplies "a strong argument in favor of shock treatment over gradualism."
"Teaching the Humane Touch" Amy Wal-
Hmeg New MDs lace, in The New York Times Magazine (Dec.
21, 1986), 229 West 43rd St., New York, N.Y.
10036.
Medicine has come far skce the days when doctors applied leeches to feverish patients. Yet if medical practices have changed radically, medical schools have not. Students are still taught according to the principles that educator Abraham Flexner set...
"Flexo on a Roll at Newspapers" Rosalind C. Truitt, in Presstime (Dec. 1986), 11600 Sun-rise Valley Dr., Reston, Va. 22091.
Printing technology, commonly traced to Johannes Gutenberg's 15th-cen- tury wooden press, actually had Chinese roots. The 11th-century alche- mist Pi Sheng made moveable type from clay and glue. Formed into char- acters, the mix was melted on a plate coated with resin, wax, and paper ash, then solidified by cooling, and reheated to be detached.
Obviously, techniques...
Book Reviews
CURRENT BOOKS
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SCHOLARS' CHOICE
Recent titles selected and reviewed by Fellows and staff of the Wilson Center
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JOHN MAYNARD Why should the life, in particular the private KEYNES:Vol. I life, of a man of ideas compel our attention? Hopes Betrayed, How are we now supposed to assess his the- 1883-1920 ories if we discover he was cruel to animals by Robert Skidelsky or never spoke to his wife? Are we the wiser Viking, for this discovery--or titillated?
1986 merely
447 pp. $24.95 Ro...
David J. Garrow Morrow, 1986 800 pp. $19.95
Big as this book is, it is not the complete chronicle of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life (1929-68). Garrow, a political scientist at the City College of New York, focuses mainly on the years of King's civil rights activism, beginning in the mid-1950s.
One learns that the 26-year-old Baptist minis-ter from Atlanta accepted the burden of leading the Southern black civil rights movement with misgivings. He was propelled to prominence in 1955, when organizers...
Alain Corbin Harvard, 1986 307 pp. $25
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164
educator Charles Willie: "By idolizing those whom we honor, we fail to realize that we could go and do likewise."
In eight crisp essays, Demos, a Yale historian, looks back at difficulties that continue to beset the American family. This perspective allows him to dismiss a number of popular notions. One is that child abuse is an enduring problem in our society. In truth, he finds, it was rare in Colonial New England; when i...
Albert 0. Hirschman Viking, 1987 197 pp. $18.95
classified air to identify what were considered to be dangerous, even deadly, odors. A strong whiff of "excrement, mud, ooze, and corpses provoked panic," says Corbin, particularly among finer folk. As for the stench of the poor, it merely offended the gentry, who, in their effort to create a well- scented "personalized atmosphere," supported a growing perfume industry.
Cholera epidemics during the 1830s brought home the urgency...
John Strohmeyer Adler, 1986 242 pp. $17.95
UP FROM THE ASHES: The Rise of the Steel Minimill in the United States
by Donald F. Bamett and Robert W. Crandall Brookings, 1986 135 pp. $26.95 cloth, $9.95
paper
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166
for human action. He then elaborates two con- cepts of his own: "exit" and "voice." Defined as possible options linking economic and political be- havior, "exit" is the individual's ability to choose, to leave intolerable business relationships, a...
Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh Harcourt, 1986 321 pp. $19.95
THE BLIND WATCHMAKER: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
Richard Dawkins Norton, 1986 332 pp. $18.95
CURRENT BOOKS
Mathematicians have never been popular, partly because tests in their subject are so frequently used as a social filter, a means, for example, of selecting candidates for business school. But most business courses require no knowledge of calcu- lus, and ease with the quadratic formula should b...
Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh Harcourt, 1986 321 pp. $19.95
THE BLIND WATCHMAKER: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
Richard Dawkins Norton, 1986 332 pp. $18.95
CURRENT BOOKS
Mathematicians have never been popular, partly because tests in their subject are so frequently used as a social filter, a means, for example, of selecting candidates for business school. But most business courses require no knowledge of calcu- lus, and ease with the quadratic formula should...
. Stanislaw Lem. Harcourt, 1986. 285 pp. $5.95
Born in Lvov, Poland, in 1921, and edu- cated as a doctor, Lem has slowly become known to American readers through his highly philosophical science fiction. Books like Eden (1959) and Solaris (1961) are as noteworthy for their treatment of ideas (e.g., cybernetics) as for their fantastic plots and settings. Repeatedly throughout these 10 discussions of science (and other) fiction, Lem voices his low opinion of a genre that he believes is a "hopeless...
Essays
Over the past several years, the news from the Netherlands has caused many Americans to wonder: Whatever happened to the sturdy Dutch? At The Hague, thousands of citizens have demon- strated against their government's belated decision to allow its allies to deploy NATO cruise missiles on Dutch soil. In Amster-dam, squatters have tossed rocks and bottles at the police. In the capital, sex shops and cafes that openly sell marijuana do a brisk business. In Utrecht, demonstrators greeted John Paul...
cabinet debated whether or not to allow the United States, under the terms of a 1979 decision by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to deploy 48 Tomahawk cruise missiles on Dutch soil. For the Netherlands, this was, in the words of New York
Times correspondent James M. Markham, "the most momentous and tormenting national security decision in postwar history."
For professional rather than political reasons, Mr. Bik probably hoped the missiles would be approved. The edition...
THE DUTCH
"The People of Holland may be divided into several Classes: The Clowns or Boors (as they call them), who cultivate the Land. The Mariners or Schippers, who supply their Ships and Inland-Boats, The Merchants or Traders, who fill their Towns. The Renteneers, or men that live in all their chief Cities upon the Rents or Interest of Estates formerly ac- quired in the Families. And the Gentle- men and Officers of the Armies."
So wrote Sir William Temple, Brit- ain's ambassador t...
Mario Vargas Llosa was one of several Latin American and Soviet novelists who came to the Wilson Center as visiting scholars during the politically tumultuous decades at the end of the 20th century. In this essay from the WQ’s Spring 1987 issue, Vargas Llosa reflected on freedom’s intimate connection to literary imagination.
and its creators. The Framers themselves took a modest view. Washington wrote: "Experience is the surest standard which to test" a nation's constitution.
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96
This spring, the nation will begin its major celebrations of the Constitution's bicentennial. A Smithsonian Institution symposium on "Constitutional Roots, Rights, and Responsibilities" in May is but one of many scholarly events that will accompany the fire-works, parades, and speeches across the land....
, dic- tated those closing words of the preface to his notes of the debates at the Constitutional Convention. This was how Madison wanted his countrymen to imagine the Convention. In many ways we have fol- lowed his wishes-and will be asked to do so again during the bicen- tennial celebrations.
Yet, for most of this century, this popular image of the Founding has coexisted with another, less heroic portrait etched by scholars since Charles A. Beard published An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution...
after the Philadel- phia Convention's adjournment, even these seemingly unexception- able words came under attack. Who, demanded Virginia's Patrick Henry, had authorized the Convention to "speak the language of We the People, instead of We the States?" In the Continental Congress, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia thundered against the document's backers, a coalition, he said, "of monarchy men, military men, aristo- crats and drones, whose noise, impudence and zeal exceed all belief."
The...
the legislature that the wheels of its government are stopped; to see it carefully examine the extent of the evil, and patiently wait for two whole years until a remedy was discovered. ..with-out having wrung a tear or a drop of blood from mankind."
As Alexis de Tocqueville marveled in his classic 1835 appraisal of Democ-racy in America (Arden, 1986), there was nothing in the history of nations like the American experiment.
The ancient Greek city-states and Irn-perial Rome had boasted "constitu-tions,"...
RESEARCH REPORTS
Reviews of new research public agencies and private institutions
"Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations."
Harvard University Press, 79 Garden St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138. 260 pp. $22.50. Authors: Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, and Lawrence Bobo
The startling images of black teenagers be- ing chased by enraged whites in Little Rock, Ark., were for many younger view- ers of PBSs Eyes on the Prize a first glimpse of what America's blacks endured...
