Devotees of sports hail a "Golden Age" almost as often as book publishers herald a "major literary event." Still, the pres- ent era is as good a contender for the title as any. Endorsements by sports stars can mean money in the bank for shaving cream manufacturers or the margin of victory for ambitious politi- cians. Professional athletes are themselves amply represented in Washington by, among others, Senator Bill Bradley (D.-N.J.), late of the New York Knicks, and Representative...

On May 17, 1939, when there were barely 400 working tele- vision sets in the United States, station W2XBS of New York produced the first live telecast of a sporting contest-the Columbia-Princeton baseball contest for fourth place in the Ivy League. The quality of broadcast was poor; a New York Times reviewer wrote, "The players were best described by observers as appearing 'like white flies' running across the screen." The sportscaster, Bill Stern, didn't know when to keep his mouth...

'I find more genuine religion at the baseball match than I do at my father's church on Fifth Avenue," Ernest Howard Crosby, the 19th-century New York social reformer, is said to have remarked. This observation may also apply, for some, to football and basketball, the other two American sports that are public liturgies as well as games.
For certain sports are rather like religions-not like Chris- tianity, Judaism, Islam, or any of the world's other great faiths, but forms of secular religion...

the colonists long be- fore Independence.
Regional differences soon became apparent. Opposition to horse rac-ing, primarily because it promoted gan~bling, was strong in Puritan- minded New England. The sport thrived in the South. Diomed, the first American racing steed to gain wide renown, was brought from Eng- land in 1798, and the American Turf Register, launched in Baltimore in 1829, was America's first sporting magazine.
In the splendidly illustrated 200 Years of Sport in America: A Pageant...

Nuclear Energy:
"Before Three Mile Island, I was comfortable with the record of nuclear energy," writes Alvin M. Weinberg, one of the pioneers of atomic power. Yet long before the accident in Pennsylvania last March, Weinberg was worried about the siting, design, man- agement, and operation of the 70 commercial U.S. nuclear power plants that today provide more than 10 percent of the nation's electricity. Short on oil and coal, some countries, nota- bly France and South Korea, are "going...

S. David Freeman, now chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and a distinguished, if disparate, panel of advisers. It presents three very differ- ent "scenarios" for U.S. energy growth up to the year 2000 and dis- cusses the econonlic and social impli- cations of each.
A "Zero Energy Growth" option, involving substantial conservation and strong federal curbs on demand, is the one favored Freeman and the study staff. It is also the option described as ideologically motivated...

the possibility of large-scale radioactive contamination. Weinberg believes that solar energy and other "clean" approaches should be pushed; but none of them, he argues, can fully substitute for the "nuclear enter-prise." Here he reviews the history of atomic power and suggests what must be done to ensure its future.

Alvin M.Weinberg
A 1-million-kilowatt, pressurized-water nuclear reactor- the type widely used in the United States today-contains 15 billion curies of radioactivity. T...

's Indian heritage. Today, a bronze statue of the defeated Aztec emperor, C~iauhthoc ("Fall- i12g Eagle"), adorns the center of Mexico City. There are several well-known painti~zgs of the victorious Spaniard, Hemdn Cortis. The most popular (above) is by muralist Diego Rivera, who depicts the great Conquistador as a cross-eyed, syphilitic hunchback.
The Wilson Quarterly/Summer 1979
116
Mexico lost one-half of its national territory to the United States in the 19th century; two years...

City, is the site of the final victory of the Spanish over
the Aztecs. A nearby plaque reads: "On August 15, 152 1, heroi-
cally defended by [Emperor] Cuauhtkmoc, Tlatelolco fell to the
power of Hernan Cortks. This was neither a victory nor a defeat,
but the painful birth of the mestizo people that is today's
Mexico."
Like any country's mythology, Mexico's contains an ele-ment of truth. The birth of her mestizo people, part Spanish, mostly Indian, actually took three centuries....

. It were more desirable that she should come to us voluntarily; but as we shall have no peace until she be annexed, let it come, even though force be necessary, at first, to bring her. Like the Sabine virgins, she will soon learn to love her ravishers.
New York Herald, October 8. 1847
Fortunately for Mexico, not all of her national territory was annexed by the United States in the wake of the war that Ulysses
S. Grant would describe as "the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a...

Hernando Cartes, Spanish conquistadores invaded Mexico in 1519. Cortes and his men, mostly of humble origin, preached Chris-tianity, hunted for gold, and con-verted or killed the natives. The Aztec civilization succumbed in less than a decade, the crucial blow corn-ing when Cortes, with a force of 900 men, captured Tenochtitlan in 1521.
Bernal Diaz del Castillo (1498- 1593) was a foot soldier who rose to serve as an aide to Cortes and later became a government official in New Spain. In True History...