A Gambling Nation?

Table of Contents

In Essence

A Survey of Recent Articles
It is familiar news, but still disturbing: most American high school students ap- pear to know little about U.S. history and less about world history. In a 1988 national test, only a minority of seniors showed even a general sense of the chronology of events in America's past or were familiar with the Dec- laration of Independence and other funda- mental texts. The National Standards for United States History and the National Stan- dards for World History, unveiled...

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A Survey of Recent Articles
It has been a long time since people spoke of "big labor" and "big business" in the same breath. But with the recent retire- ment of the American Federation of Labor- Congress of Industrial Organizations' (AFL- CIO) long-time president, Lane Kirkland, the labor movement's prospects are being reap- praised. Both candidates to succeed Kirkland are pledging to shift resources into organizing campaigns. After decades of decline, could recovery be in...

Jonathan Walters, in Governing (May 1995), 2300 N St. N.W., Ste. 760, Washington, D.C. 20037.
Despite its ungainly name, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991 was supposed to usher in a new era of flexibility and creativity in American trans- portation. No longer would federal aid go overwhelmingly to highway construction. Now there would be more bike paths and public transit, fewer superhighways. It has not worked out that way, reports Walters, a senior writer at...

Jonathan Walters, in Governing (May 1995), 2300 N St. N.W., Ste. 760, Washington, D.C. 20037.
Despite its ungainly name, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991 was supposed to usher in a new era of flexibility and creativity in American trans- portation. No longer would federal aid go overwhelmingly to highway construction. Now there would be more bike paths and public transit, fewer superhighways. It has not worked out that way, reports Walters, a senior writer at...

Larry Arnhart, in American Political Science Review (June 1995),American Political Science Assn., 1527 New Hampshire Ave. N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20036.
Most modern political theorists, like social scientists in general, reject out of hand the possibility that human behavior-as well as morality-has roots in biology. Nature, they insist, is nothing next to nurture in the for- mation of human beings.
But recently, writes Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois Uni- versity,...

As shown by the use of surnames (not to mention family reunions), humans attach a lot of importance to knowing who their relatives are. So, it seems, do wasps, wildflowers, and many other members of the plant and animal kingdoms.

"Time to Dump Recycling?" Chris Henrickson, Lester Lave, and Francis McMichael, in Issues in Science and Technology (Spring 1995), University of Texas at Dallas, P.O. Box 830688, Mail Station AD13, Richardson, Texas 75083-0688.
Recycling, that seemingly unimpeachable symbol of environmental virtue, has become standard practice in much of the nation. Un- fortunately, contend professors Henrickson (civil engineering), Lave (economics), and McMichael (environmental engineering), all of...

Andrew J. Pierre and William B. Quandt, in Foreign Policy (Summer 1995), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2400 N St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037-1153.
Since early 1992, Islamic militants and Algeria's military regime have been locked in a bloody struggle that has reportedly cost more than 30,000 lives. Now Algeria's woes are becoming a crisis for France, say Pierre, a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Quandt, a political scientist at the University...

Andrew J. Pierre and William B. Quandt, in Foreign Policy (Summer 1995), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2400 N St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037-1153.
Since early 1992, Islamic militants and Algeria's military regime have been locked in a bloody struggle that has reportedly cost more than 30,000 lives. Now Algeria's woes are becoming a crisis for France, say Pierre, a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Quandt, a political scientist at the University...

Book Reviews

THE ORIGIN OF SATAN. By Elaine Pagels.
Random House. 256 pp. $23
THE DEATH OF SATAN: How Americans
Have Lost the Sense of Evil. By Andrew
Delbanco. Farrar, Straus. 320 pp. $23

LIFE ON THE RUSSIAN COUNTRY
ESTATE: A Social and Cultural History. By
Priscilla Roosevelt. Yale. 384 pp. $45

Essays

Americans have always been of two minds about gamblers and gambling.

Jackson Lears

The United States has embarked on an unprecedented experiment with legalized gambling.

ROBERT GOODMAN

The action is everything, more consuming than sex, more immediate than politics, more important always than the acquisition of money.
-Joan Didion, The White Album

DAVID SPANIER

The idea of happiness has become so deeply embedded in American culture that it sometimes disappears from sight.

ROBERT DARNTON

Among Paris's postwar intellectuals, Albert Camus stood apart—both for his independence and his compelling lucidity. Yet few of his admirers knew how different Camus was even from the persona that came through in his early, existential writings. As our author shows, the uncompleted novel brings us closer to the man we barely knew.

ROBERT ROYAL

Though founded upon Western secularist principles, Turkey has not been immune to the Islamic fundamentalist upsurge of recent years. Nowhere is Ataturk's legacy more pointedly challenged, the author shows, than in heated public struggles over matters affecting women and their status as full and equal citizens.

AMY SCHWARTZ

Despite more than three decades of generous private and government support for the arts, arts education in the United States can boast of only meager results. In this time of diminished funding and growing skepticism, the solo oboist of the New York Philharmonic explains what was so crucial in his own musical education—and why it is precisely what is missing, and needed, in arts education today.

JOSEPH ROBINSON

Between the intellectual and the political leader there inevitably lies a gap.

Robert K. Landers

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