Spring 1985
The Irish
In Essence
James H. Hut-
son, in Reviews in American History (Dec.
ounders 1984), Johns Hopkins University Press, Whitehead Hall, 34th & Charles Sts., Baltimore, Md. 21218.
Nearly 200 years after the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention, American historians still do not agree on what they were "really" up to.
Historians have spun conflicting theories about the founding of the Republic since the Constitution was ratified in 1789. Until recently, writes...
Supreme Court interpretations of the Con- stitution, begat no new breed of revisionists. The field today belongs to scholars who, having discredited "the Beard thesis," now labor in "per- plexity and muddle."
"The Politics of Moral Vision" Michael
Lerner, in Commonweal (Jan. 1 1, 1985),
232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 1001 6.
Two decades ago, Governor Ronald Reagan rose to national promi- nence by cracking down on California's campus radicals. Last year, President...
Steven Kel- man, in The Public Interest (winter 1985), 20th & Northampton Sts., Easton, Pa. 18042.
In January 1984, the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control
(a.k.a. the Grace Commission) made a big splash in the newspapers when it reported that, during the previous three years alone, Washing- ton bureaucrats had wasted $424 billion.
Americans love to hear this kind of "bad" news, says Kelman, who teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. It confirms their conviction...
John W. Sloan, in Presidential Studies Quarterly (Winter 1985), Center for the Study of the Presidency, 208 East 75th St., New York,
N.Y. 10021.
When economists try to explain what caused America's alarming out- break of inflation during the 1970s, they point their fingers first at Arab oil sheiks, then at President Lyndon B. Johnson.
failing to increase federal taxes soon enough during the mid-1960s to cover the growing costs of the Vietnam War, they argue, LBJ allowed the US. economy to overheat,...
opposition politicians." Not un- til August 1967 did the President's counselors become sure-or force-ful-enough to convince him to request a 10 percent Vietnam War surcharge on federal income taxes. Only in June of 1968 did Congress pass it. Too little, perhaps; too late, without a doubt.
FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE
"In the National Interest" Arthur~rals Schlesinger,Jr., in Worldview (Dec. 1984),
P.O. ~0x1935,Marion, Ohio 43305.
In most countries, pursuit of the national int...
Andrew Kohut and Nicholas Horrock, in Public Opinion (0ct.-Nov. 1984), American Enterprise In- stitute, 1150 17th St. N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20036-9964.
If academic stereotypes were suddenly made real, the senior members of America's military would probably resemble the maniacal General Ripper of Dr. Strangelove fame. Just how far that caricature is from the truth is revealed Kohut and Horrock, respectively president of the Gallup Organization and Newsweek correspondent.
Moderate conservatism...
nearly 2 to 1.
"Where Reaganomics Works" Henry
R. Nau, in Foreign Policy (Winter 1984/85), P.O. Box 984, Farmingdale,
N.Y. 11737.
Free trade and protectionism are the terms usually employed in de- bates over U.S. foreign economic policy. More useful words might be "globalism" and "domesticism."
According to Nau, a George Washington University political scientist and former staff member of President Reagan's National Security Council, the globalist view has long...
its brute economic power, the domesticists reasoned that if the U.S. economy "could be revitalized and steered back to price stability, market incentives, and freer trade, the world economy might be induced to follow."
Nau maintains that this approach has worked. Worldwide, inflation is down, and long-depressed economies are beginning to bloom anew. Next, says Nau, Washington should try to capitalize on its successful trade talks with Israel and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations...
the book's authors, Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
The two business consultants published their book when the nation was mired in its deepest recession since the 1930s and when U.S. busi- nessmen were desperately trying to figure out where they had gone wrong. Notes Business Week:"The book's basic message was U.S. com- panies could regain their competitive edge paying more attention to people-customers and employees-and by sticking to the skills and values they know best. And...
the book's authors, Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
The two business consultants published their book when the nation was mired in its deepest recession since the 1930s and when U.S. busi- nessmen were desperately trying to figure out where they had gone wrong. Notes Business Week:"The book's basic message was U.S. com- panies could regain their competitive edge paying more attention to people-customers and employees-and by sticking to the skills and values they know best. And...
pher Lasch, in Harper's (Nov. 1984), P.O.
Box 1937, Marion, Ohio 43306.
The nostalgic notion that "things ain't what they used to be" is often cultivated the political Right and criticized by the Left. Ironically, says Lasch, a University of Rochester historian, both sides share a de- sire to avoid taking history seriously.
Nostalgia emerged as an ideological issue during the late 1940s, when Progressive historians such as Columbia's Richard Hofstadter la- mented that Americans, buffeted...
creating new identities or inventing usable pasts." Only the "educated classes" have the luxury of believing that it can. Unfortunately, these are the very people Americans count on to come to grips with the lesson of the nation's past in charting its future.
"The Garbage Decade" William L.Garbdogy Rathje, in American Behavioral Scientist
(Sept.-Oct. 1984), Sage Publications, 275
South Beverly Dr., Beverly Hills, Calif.
90212.
"You are what you eat," goes...
his students. But the game turned serious; a team of trained research- ers has since analyzed, weighed, and catalogued household refuse in Tucson, Milwaukee, Marin County (California), and Mexico City.
One advantage of garbage research is that it uncovers what people would rather not reveal about themselves or might not even know. There is, for example, a considerable disparity between how much alco- hol people say they drink and the number of wine and liquor bottles that actually turn up in...
PERIODICALS
SOCIETY
Lamb, a psychiatrist who headed an American Psychiatric Associa- tion study of the problem, traces its origins to the early 1960s, when "deinstitutionalization" began. Scandalous conditions at state mental hospitals helped to start the process. So did new theories of treatment and 1963 federal legislation that made the mentally ill eligible for dis- ability benefits and established small community mental health cen- ters. The number of patients in state mental institutions...
PaulReagan 1, Media 0 Johnson, in Encounter (No". 1984),59 St.
Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4JS, Eng-
land.
In his 1984 memoir Caveat, former Secretary of State Alexander Haig complained that during the early days of the Reagan administration the nation's TV networks, newsmagazines, and top newspapers "let themselves be converted into . . . bulletin boards" for the White House.
Johnson, a British journalist, finds a certain grim justice in that.
For 20 years, American presidents...
Michael Novak, in TheNew York Times Magazine (Oct. 21, 1984), 229 West 43rd
Latin-Style St., New York, N.Y. 10036.
Fourteen years ago, a little-known Peruvian priest named Gustavo Gutierrez published his book, A Theology of Liberation.Today, the doc- trine it inaugurated is controversial enough to provoke Pope John Paul 11's anger and to garner front-page stories in U.S. newspapers.
Novak, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, traces the roots of liberation theology back to...
James The Apocalypse H. Moorhead, Journal of American History
(Dec. 19841. Ballantine Hall. Indiana Uni-
versity, ~lkomin~ton, Ind. 47405.
Amid the numerous religious revivals of the early 19th century, Amer- ica's Protestants turned toward a new "postmillennial" theology.
Many earlier Protestants had held that the Apocalypse and Second Coming would be followed the millennium, a 1,000-year-long earthly paradise. The postmillennialists reversed the order: The millen- nium would precede...
James The Apocalypse H. Moorhead, Journal of American History
(Dec. 19841. Ballantine Hall. Indiana Uni-
versity, ~lkomin~ton, Ind. 47405.
Amid the numerous religious revivals of the early 19th century, Amer- ica's Protestants turned toward a new "postmillennial" theology.
Many earlier Protestants had held that the Apocalypse and Second Coming would be followed the millennium, a 1,000-year-long earthly paradise. The postmillennialists reversed the order: The millen- nium would precede...
the movement of molten iron-itself magnetized billions of years ago the sun or some other celestial body-thousands of miles beneath the planet's surface. As the liquid metal rises, it gradually cools and begins sinking back toward the Earth's core, creating "eddies" some 100 miles in diameter. There may be as many as 50 of them. The rotation of the Earth on its axis makes most (but not all) of the eddies point either north or south. "The net direction of the magnetic field,"...
Haydn Bush, in Science 84 (Sept. 1984), P.O. Box 3207, Harlan, Iowa
To judge press releases and newspaper headlines, the cure rate for cancer has been improving steadily for years. Actually, writes Bush, di- rector of the London Regional Cancer Centre in Canada, "we're not cur- ing much more cancer than we were a generation ago."
Doctors can claim real progress in effecting cures for a few relatively rare cancers (e.g., childhood leukemia, Hodgkin's disease) but for only two of the more...
Haydn Bush, in Science 84 (Sept. 1984), P.O. Box 3207, Harlan, Iowa
To judge press releases and newspaper headlines, the cure rate for cancer has been improving steadily for years. Actually, writes Bush, di- rector of the London Regional Cancer Centre in Canada, "we're not cur- ing much more cancer than we were a generation ago."
Doctors can claim real progress in effecting cures for a few relatively rare cancers (e.g., childhood leukemia, Hodgkin's disease) but for only two of the more...
the year 2100. Ironically, the very fact that the greenhouse effect is a global problem militates against cutbacks in fuel use simply to reduce C02: Individual nations would bear the costs of conservation while all would share in the benefits. And for many poorer nations, such as Bangladesh, there are a number of more press- ing needs than combating the greenhouse effect.
Mankind may be only decades away from being able to engineer a kind of global countercooling, chiefly means of releasing into...
? mdAmiqm (Oct. 1984, PO. Box 20600,
Bergenfield, N.J. 07621.
Jackson Pollock's famed "drip" paintings have hung in museums across the United States for several decades now. Yet, many viewers undoubtedly still ask themselves whether a five-year-old child armed with a few cans of paint might not have done as well as the founder of abstract expressionism. So Arts and Antiques put the question to 23 prominent artists and intellectuals: "Was Jackson Pollock any good?"
There is...
Jackson Pollock, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution.
"Scholarship versus Culture" Jacques
Barzun, in The Atlantic Monthly (Nov.
1984), Box 2547, Boulder, Colo. 80322.
More artifacts of culture are being created, unearthed, collected, classi-
fied, exhibited, and analyzed nowadays than at any time in human his-
tory. Yet, paradoxically, contends Columbia University's Barzun, true
culture itself is in danger of being smothered.
To Barzun, the chief...
virtue of being syntheses of the world," says Barzun. To dissect them "scientifically," trying to pry loose their component parts, is to misunderstand them. Works of art are meant to be regarded whole and to nurture mind and spirit.
Barzun perceives a mood of futility in the academic "kingdom of analysis, criticalness, and theory ." Sooner or later, he believes, the "forces of fatigue and boredom" will bring scholars' dominion over cul- ture to an end.
"Freud...
Dale Harris, in Degas9Ã? Da~cms Ballet News (Nov. 1984), 1865 Broadway,
New York, N.Y. 10023.
The "ballet boom" of recent years has made Edgar Degas's (1834-1917) paintings of ballerinas as familiar as the Mona Lisa and Whistler's Mother. But neither ballet nor the art of Degas was always viewed so fa- vorably, recalls Harris, who teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
In Degas's late-19th-century Paris, ballerinas stood barely a cut above dance-hall girls in the social pecking order....
PERIODICALS
cheesecake. In a famous incident during the 1861 Paris premiere of Wagner's opera Tannhauser, a group of wealthy young men who ar- rived too late for the "titillating" ballet portion howled the opera down. Degas apparently shared the general low public regard for bal- let: In many of his famous canvases, he lavished as much attention on the spectators and their social doings as on the dancers.
Degas's 1,500 ballet pieces earned him a reputation for misogyny in his own day....
Abimael Guzman, a professor at a provincial uni- versity in Ayacucho, high in the Andes, the Shining Path took up arms in 1980. Its leaders scorn both the Soviet Union and China, and receive no aid from either. The group is responsible for some 2,500 terrorist at- tacks nationwide-on factories, power plants, embassies-and 615 deaths. It enjoys growing popularity in the mountains around Ayacu- cho; the number of active terrorists has jumped from just two or three hundred in 1980 to perhaps 3,000...
The Philippines's David A. Rosenberg, in Problems of corn- munism (Sept.-Oct. 1984), Superinten- New Communists dent of Documents, U.S. Government
Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402.
In 1981, President Ferdinand Marcos ended 10 years of martial law in the Philippines. During that decade, argues Rosenberg, a Middlebury College political scientist, Marcos managed through incompetence and bad judgment to rub old scars raw.
Marcos's iron-handed rule (he retains extraordinary powers) has str...
Book Reviews
by Michael Schudson
Basic, 1984
288 pp. $17.95
by Alan Riding
Knopf, 1984
385 pp. $18.95
by David Halle
Chicago, 1984
360 pp. $24.95
by John M. Allegro
Prometheus, 1984
252 pp. $18.95
by Jonathan D. Spence
Viking, 1984
350 pp. $19.95
by John P. Diggins
Basic, 1984
409 pp. $23.95
by Michael J. Piore and
Charles F. Sabel
Basic, 1984
368 pp. $21.95
by Wallace Terry
Random, 1984
311 pp. $17.95
by Dylan Thomas
New Directions, 1984
362 pp. $16.95
edited, introduced,
and annotated
by Marcello Conati
translated by
Richard Stokes
Comell, 1984
417 pp. $25
by William H. Pritchard
Oxford, 1984
286 pp. $15.95
by Jeremy Bernstein
Scribner's, 1984
241 pp. $17.95
by J. David Bolter
Univ. of N.C., 1984
264 pp. $19.95
by Edward O. Wilson
Harvard, 1984
157 pp. $15
By Keith Thomas. Pantheon, 1984. 426 pp.
$10.95
By Klaus Wagenbach. Translated by Arthur
S. Wensinger. Pantheon, 1984. 221 pp.
$17.95
By Khushwant
Singh. Princeton, 1984.419 pp. (vol.
l), 395 pp. (vol. 2). $25 set
Essays
Mention Bolivia or Belgium to the average American adult, and the conversation will soon flag. Bring up Ireland, and the talk will always find a focus. Yeats? Killarney? Guinness? Associa- tions generously tumble forth. Some 40 million Americans have Irish blood in their veins; five times that many, it seems, believe they can imitate an Irish brogue. Often overlooked-veiled, per-haps, an assumed familiarity-is how unfamiliar to most Americans the Republic of Ireland really is. The Republic is,...
Nature placed Ireland exactly the wrong distance from Great Britain.
Had the island been somewhat closer to its larger sister, the Irish people might well have become more fully assimilated into the British family, much as the Scots and Welsh have been. Had Ireland been placed farther out in the Atlantic, it might have been allowed to develop in relative peace, as Iceland was, with- out the incessant interference of a powerful neighbor.
As it happened, Ireland was just close enough to keep Lon-...
Army, Navy, and Air Force, together with their spouses, could sit comfortably inside Dublin's 50,000-seat Croke Park, where the national hurling and Gaelic football matches are played every autumn. There are more sheep in Ireland than peo- ple, and twice as many cows, and both enjoy the right of way on rural Irish roads. Life in Ireland is played on a very small stage-one reason, perhaps, why Irish newspapers feature no gossip columns, and why journalists have no tradition of inves- tigative reporting....
immigrants repre- sent the most miserable, backward class of peasantry in north- em Europe; they were also Roman Catholics in an obdurately Protestant land. Perhaps as many as one-third were not fluent in English. Virtually all of them were destitute.
Unlike many Germans and most Scandinavians, the new immigrants shunned the countryside. While the vast majority of them had been farmers, they had also been ignorant farmers. The oppressive Anglo-Irish landlord system back home, under which the Irish...
, is enhanced on nearly every page Louis Ie Brocquy's equally elegant abstract drawings.
Thanks to Christian missionaries, who arrived in Ireland during the fifth century A.D., the spoken verse of the Heroic Age was preserved for posterity on parchment. The mis- sionaries and later monks also penned poems, hymns, and tracts of their own. For these, see Douglas Hyde's Literary istory of Ireland (Scribner's, 1892; St. Martin's, 1980).
"From Clonmacnois I come; 1 My course of studies done I...
"Emily was my patron saint," said William Carlos Williams in a 1962 interview. More recently, another prominent American poet, Adrienne Rich, described Dickinson as "the genius of the 19th-century female mind in America." Rich went on to praise Dickinson for inventing "a language more varied, more com- pressed, more dense with implications, more complex of syntax, than any American poetic language to date."
Despite the accolades of the poets and the probing of biogra-...
history ." History, wrote Matthew Arnold, is a "huge Mississippi of falsehood." "Merely gossip," added Oscar Wilde. Such critics might have felt more hopeful had they seen the emergence of archaeology as a scholarly discipline. Known mostly for uncovering old tombs, old bones, and ancient cities, archaeologists occupy a peculiar place in academe: They are "social scientists," with strong links to anthropology and his- tory, but their techniques are often those...
The stuff of archaeology is the debris of yesterday.
Archaeology is the science of what has remained, for any rea- son at all, anyplace in the world, from any period of the past. The breadth of its concerns is virtually limitless, its raw material corre- spondingly wide-ranging: From stone tools, held in the strata at Olduvai Gorge, to a Roman villa in England, its buried foundation appearing as a pattern of "crop marks" in a wheat field; from butchered bones, found at the site of...
Archaeology as a scientific discipline has undergone a series of radical changes during the past 30 years in both its intellectual ori- entation and its methods-giving us the "new archaeology."
What is the new archaeology? It is not, really, a coherent in- tellectual movement, but at its heart lies the desire of archaeolo- gists to contribute to the general body of social-science theory regarding the nature of human behavior and the processes of cultural evolution. When and how did...
An-drew Sherratt of Oxford University. The 55 contributors to this compre- hensive, superbly illustrated volume cover everything from "the handaxe makers" to "early states in Africa" to "dating and dating methods." The en- cyclopedia represents, in Sherratt's words, "an attempt to summarize the present state of knowledge over the whole field of archaeological inquiry ."
Two especially useful adjuncts to the Cambridge encyclopedia are The Penguin Dictionary...
public agencies and private institutions
"Accounting for the Decline in Union Membership."
National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge,
Mass. 02138.26 pp. $1.50.
Authors: William T. Dickens and Jonathan S. Leonard
Many theories have been advanced to third of organized labor's losses.
explain the steady decline of American But really to understand the present
labor unions since the mid-1950s. And state of American labor unions, the au-
according to D...
Sidney W. Mintz, one of 11 pamphlets in the Focus Caribbean series, published the Wilson Center's Latin American Program.
Beyond the beaches and modern hotels that beckon American tourists to the 15 island-nations and 17 depen- dent territories of the Caribbean lie endangered rural peasant societies.
On their reinvigoration, says Mintz, a Johns Hopkins anthropologist, may depend the political health of the is- lands themselves.
In an unusual way, the Caribbean's peasants are products of European...
Is New Orleans really The City questions are answered, soberly and That Care Forgot? Is it truly The Big scientifically. Health statistics are Easy, as the travel posters proclaim? called for-computerized print-outs Or could these labels be applied just covering every man, woman, and as accurately to Newark, San Jose, or child from Chalmette to River Ridge. Toledo? Reams of them. Such data should be Lawsuits over false advertising can readily at hand since Louisiana has be messy, so it is high...
