Spring 1980
Puerto Rico
In Essence
"Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma" by Derrick A. Bell, Jr., in Haivard Law Review (Jan. 1980), Gannett House, Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
court-ordered busing in 1976, rioting Boston students attack a black lawyer with Old Gloq~. Stan-ley Forman's photo won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize.
dicial second thoughts," too. In recent decisions such as Milliken v. Bradley (1974)and Dayton Board of Education v. Briizkimzn (1977), the Court has "erected barriers" to achieving racial balance in schools- chiefly rating "local control" just as important as integration (effec- tively preventing school busing between the suburbs...
lawyers who helped redesign California's welfare system under Gov- ernor Ronald Reagan, the firm boasts 18 attorneys and offices in Sac- ramento, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
At a time when the more than 100 liberal public-interest law firms face major financial problems, the conservatives are prospering. Twenty-seven percent of Pacific's present $2 million budget comes from corporations. Chambers of Commerce, trade associations, foundations, private law firms, and individuals also provide money....
Thomas E. Cronin, in Public Opinion
Expectations (Feb.-March 1980), Circulation Depart-
ment. c/o AEI. 1150 17th St. N.W.. Wash- ington, D.C. 20036.
In a recent Gallup Poll, 73 percent of Americans surveyed said that "the public expects more of a President today than in the past." Another survey late last year showed that Americans believe "strong leader- ship" to be the single most important quality in a President.
In 1787, the Founding Fathers designed the Presidency as...
Thomas E. Cronin, in Public Opinion
Expectations (Feb.-March 1980), Circulation Depart-
ment. c/o AEI. 1150 17th St. N.W.. Wash- ington, D.C. 20036.
In a recent Gallup Poll, 73 percent of Americans surveyed said that "the public expects more of a President today than in the past." Another survey late last year showed that Americans believe "strong leader- ship" to be the single most important quality in a President.
In 1787, the Founding Fathers designed the Presidency as...
detente.
mid-1975, Tucker contends, Kissinger recognized that his detente policy had failed. Since then, he has backed higher military spending and tougher anti-Soviet policies. But, ironically, his Democratic suc- cessors accepted and extended Kissinger's original approach.
According to Tucker, Carter took office convinced that new condi- tions-chiefly, the nuclear stalemate and the West's economic depend- ence on the Third World-made the superpowers' military strength largely irrelevant. The...
Clarence
Y. H. Lo, in Journal of Political and Mili- tary Sociology (Fall 1979), Department of Sociology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, 111.601 15.
Was General Douglas MacArthur "stretching" his orders in late November 1950, when he attempted to drive north to Korea's border with China on the Yalu River? His critics so contend. But according to UCLA sociologist Lo, recently declassified U.S. documents show that the Truman administration explicitly supported MacArthur's ill-fated...
the satellites would trigger transmit- tal of the codes required to fire selected Minuteman missiles. The code combinations-hidden in constantly changing cryptographic memory banks (similar to message-security systems already in use)-would render the odds against accidental launch or Soviet interference as- tronomically high. To further reduce the dangers of a mistaken launch, the satellites would activate Minuteman missiles with "inert" warheads, which could be armed in flight electronically...
Edward L. Feige, in Challen~e(Nov.-Dec. 1979)) 901 ~.-~roadwa~,
white Plains,
N.Y. 10603.
In Washington, bad economic data may result in bad policy. Feige, a University of Wisconsin economist, finds the federal government's statistics on the U.S. economy so incomplete as to be nearly worthless.
The main problem: the official data exclude "irregular" economic activity-from illegal drug trafficking and gambling profits to moonlighting and "off-the-books' bartering. Economist Peter...
Edward L. Feige, in Challen~e(Nov.-Dec. 1979)) 901 ~.-~roadwa~,
white Plains,
N.Y. 10603.
In Washington, bad economic data may result in bad policy. Feige, a University of Wisconsin economist, finds the federal government's statistics on the U.S. economy so incomplete as to be nearly worthless.
The main problem: the official data exclude "irregular" economic activity-from illegal drug trafficking and gambling profits to moonlighting and "off-the-books' bartering. Economist Peter...
2.3 percent annually, nearly double the rate of increase during the '60s. Unemployment hovered between 7 and 9 percent throughout the mid-'70s.
But during the '80s, says Weber, professor of economics and public administration at Carnegie-Mellon University, the labor force will grow only 1.1 percent annually. And the American work force as a group will age. The proportion of workers in the 16-to-24 age bracket will decline from the current 23.9 percent to 18.4 percent by 1990. And, although the...
IODICALS
ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS
adequate food, shelter, health care, and education. Almost regardless of their economic growth, nations can launch successful antipoverty campaigns. Indeed, the few Third World governments that have made solid progress in raising living standards-including Burma, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Hong Kong, North Korea, South Korea, Panama, Paraguay, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Uruguay~constitute a very mixed bag.
Capitalist nations such as South Korea and T...
Sandra L. Hofferth and Kristin A. Moore in American Sociological Review (Oct. 1979), 1722 N St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Teen-age mothers-are they destined for a life of poverty, dead-end jobs, and rocky marriages? A recent study Hofferth and Moore, re- searchers at the Urban Institute, indicates that early childbearing does limit future earnings and opportunity. But their findings also show that early births alone cannot explain the plight of many young mothers.
The authors studied the experiences...
Gambling Mark H. Haller, in Journal of Social Issues
(vol. 35. no. 3. 1979). P.O. Box 1248, Ann
Gambling-the word today conjures up images of the Las Vegas "strip," regulated racetrack betting operations, the numbers game, and the pervasive influence of ruthless mobsters. It wasn't always this way, writes Temple University historian Haller.
In 1900, Americans in a sporting mood had several choices. They could try their hands at cards or roulette at the usually illegal casinos found...
the early '50s.) Meanwhile West Indian blacks introduced the numbers game-another form of lottery-into New York City in the early '20s. 1930, West Indians such as Jose Enrique (Henry) Miro, "Big Joe" Ison, and Everett Watson had built powerful empires in the burgeoning ghettos of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit.
Nothing hastened the spread of gambling as much as the telephone. By 1914, bookies such as Arnold Rothstein and Frank Erickson of New York had learned to elude police...
the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Wel- fare. But Petchesky asserts that many "health professionals" and family-planning advocates still encourage sterilization as a form of population control; their prime targets remain poor, uneducated women seeking protection from unwanted pregnancies.
PRESS & TELEVISION
conflictsOf Interest? "Interlocking Directorates" Peter Dreier and Steven Weinberg, in Columbia Journalism Review (Nov.-Dec. 1979). 200 Alton PI., Marion, 0hi...
William Adams and Michael Joblove, in Was Bad News Policy Review (Winter 1980), 513 c st.
N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002.
Between 1975 and 1979, after their "liberation" communist leader Pol Pot, an estimated 3 million Cambodians died from starvation, from disease, or by execution. This great human tragedy long went virtually unreported on evening network TV newscasts, say Adams, professor of public administration at George Washington University, and Joblove, a Duke University law student.
Cambodia's...
Stephen White, in The New Statesman (Sept. 7, in Taganrog 1979), 10 Great Turnstile, London WCiV 7HJ, England.
More than half the Soviet population can now tune in Western radio broadcasts. An estimated 20 percent or more of Soviet city-dwellers regularly follow the BBC, Voice of America, and West Germany's Deutsche Welle. This access is putting a strain on the Soviet domestic propaganda apparatus, says White, a University of Glasgow Sovietologist.
A series of studies reported last May Pravda...
Stephen White, in The New Statesman (Sept. 7, in Taganrog 1979), 10 Great Turnstile, London WCiV 7HJ, England.
More than half the Soviet population can now tune in Western radio broadcasts. An estimated 20 percent or more of Soviet city-dwellers regularly follow the BBC, Voice of America, and West Germany's Deutsche Welle. This access is putting a strain on the Soviet domestic propaganda apparatus, says White, a University of Glasgow Sovietologist.
A series of studies reported last May Pravda...
the late '60s, however, advertisers had pulled out of the TV production business, except for soap operas and occasional specials. Two cost factors were responsible, explains Kiechel. First was the "seemingly inexorable rise" in the price of commercial air time, which discouraged the typical advertiser from betting all his dollars on one show. Second was the increase in the cost of producing programs. Ad- vertisers responded with "package buyingu-the practice of purchasing commercial...
a 3 to 2 margin. Blacks are more apt than whites to be evangelical. They make up roughly 10 percent of the population but 15 percent of the evangelicals.
While liberal Protestant denominations such as the United Presbyter- ian and United Methodist churches have been losing 75,000 to 100,000 members annually during the '70s, conservative evangelical churches like the Pentecostal and the Assembly of God are growing rapidly. Gal- lup suggests that with their large numbers of youthful adherents (13...
Mar- tin E. Martv. in The Journal of Relieion Tolerance (Oct. 1979),university of Chicago press,
5801 Ellis Ave., Chicago, 111. 60637.
If Americans take their religion seriously, how can they tolerate rival faiths? Tocqueville had a simple answer in the 19th century: American religious beliefs were either shallow or irrational.
Marty, a historian at the University of Chicago Divinity School, dis- agrees. In part, he says, tolerance stemmed from a tactical judgment made early American religious...
R. Jeffrey Smith, in Sci-ence (Dec. 14, 1979)- 1515 Massachusetts
U.S. SpaCe EffortS Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.
As the 1980s dawn, the U.S. space program is beset with problems. The space shuttle, the No. 1 project of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is currently behind schedule (15 months) and way over cost projections. Budget-cutters in Congress are complaining, the public is disenchanted, and the agency's staff is divided.
The space shuttle has been a big...
Mitch Waldrop, in Chemica2 and in on a T~eory
Close d Mat- BUiZdiMgBlocks Navs 21, 1980),
Engineering(Jan. Mem-
bership ancf Subscription Services, ACS,
P.O. Box 3337, Columbus, Ohio 43210.
Particle physicists--who study the nucleus of the atom--are nearing an
understanding of the basic nature of matter and its building blocks,
says ~hemical and Engineering News correspondent Waldrop. Among
the pioneers are Harvard physicists Sheldon Glashow and Stephen
Weinberg, and Abdus Salam of the I...
Leonard Hayflick, in Scientific American Not in the Cards (Jan. 1980). 415 Madison Ave., New York,
N.Y. 10017.
The only obstacles separating man from eternal life may well be disease and that mysterious pattern of decay known as "the aging process." But seekers after perpetual youth will probably be disappointed. Recent findings in cell biology suggest that aging is one of the body's normal functions, instead of a breakdown of those functions, writes Hayflick, a biologist at the Children's...
Stephen Jay Gould. in Natural History (Dec. 1979). ~ernbershi~ D&
Services, Box 6000, Moines, Iowa 50340.
How can the process of scientific creativity be explained? Do discov- eries result from inductive reasoning, with scientists cautiously con- structing theories from a growing foundation of facts? Or are they the products of sudden, inexplicable strokes of genius the gifted few?
Gould, who teaches the history of science at Harvard, rejects both theories. Describing Charles Darwin's progress...
Stephen Jay Gould. in Natural History (Dec. 1979). ~ernbershi~ D&
Services, Box 6000, Moines, Iowa 50340.
How can the process of scientific creativity be explained? Do discov- eries result from inductive reasoning, with scientists cautiously con- structing theories from a growing foundation of facts? Or are they the products of sudden, inexplicable strokes of genius the gifted few?
Gould, who teaches the history of science at Harvard, rejects both theories. Describing Charles Darwin's progress...
Chaco Canyon between A.D. 800 and 1250. Skilled builders and traders, they developed advanced irrigation systems and lived in massive, sophisticated pueblos. One multistoried complex contained some 800 rooms. Between 30 and 40 Anasazi towns were linked hundreds of miles of smooth dirt roads, some 30 feet wide. The roads also led to agricultural areas and rock quarries, indicating a highly organized network of farming, man- ufacturing, and commerce.
The calendar is as accurate as any known mechanism...
monitoring worldwide research and keeping records of discoveries, these institutes are starting to serve as reference centers for microbe specialists. They can help experts find and obtain strains they need, and identify projects and experiments that could benefit from microbe supplies on file. (Tens of thousands of microbe strains are catalogued in the system's directory.) They also train new microbe specialists from developing countries and promote new appli- cations of microbiology-such as water...
sending vast clouds of dust into the atmosphere, starting around 2000 B.C. In West Africa's Sahel, experts trace the re- gion's weak plant life to both overgrazing and slash-and-burn agricul- ture centuries ago. "Killer droughts" such as occurred in 1973-74 were probably a recurring result.
Humans have cleared 7 million square kilometers of tropical forest alone, equivalent to half the Earth's present jungle area. Forty percent of the rain forests of Africa and Brazil have been destroyed....
Kyshtym seriously malfunctioned. A cooling system foul-up crippled a breeder reactor near the Caspian Sea in 1973. In Czechoslovakia, one power station leaked radioactive gas in 1976 and radioactive waste water in 1977.
Will a strong "no-nuke" movement develop within the Soviet bloc? Probably not under the more repressive regimes in the USSR, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Rumania, say the authors. But in Poland and Hungary, where Western newscasts have alerted radio listeners...
the modernists-that middle-class morality, linearity, cause and effect, and transparent lan- guage cannot capture the chaos of 20th-century life. Disjunction, simul- taneity, and irrationality must be incorporated into literature. But the postmodernist must also remember that the bewildering works the modernists wrote as protests against traditionalism have made their point. We don't need any more Finnegan's Wakes, writes Barth. Post- modernists should give us books more readable than the forbiddingly...
the modernists-that middle-class morality, linearity, cause and effect, and transparent lan- guage cannot capture the chaos of 20th-century life. Disjunction, simul- taneity, and irrationality must be incorporated into literature. But the postmodernist must also remember that the bewildering works the modernists wrote as protests against traditionalism have made their point. We don't need any more Finnegan's Wakes, writes Barth. Post- modernists should give us books more readable than the forbiddingly...
PERIODICALS
English at Boston University, contends that Dickens' landscape writing improved greatly during his career. His increasing interest in nature paralleled his growing concern with psychology.
The country settings of Oliver Twist (1838) offer a brief respite from the gritty, teeming urban environment that dominates the novel. But Dickens' countryside seems drawn from a fairy tale, with Oliver spend- ing his time picking wildflowers "for the embellishment of the breakfast-table"...
an "economic miracle" that has produced the world's 18th highest per capita GNP (behind Japan, ahead of Britain).
Naimark argues that Communist Party chief Erich Honecker's goals of creating a distinct East German sense of nationalism and of winning popular loyalty remain remote. Communist control depends largely on force-the sealed Western border, the Berlin Wall, and the 1.2 million Soviet and East German troops and policemen inside the GDR. Dis- satisfaction with the regime is widespread...
Peter Prewar Japan DUUS and Daniel I. Okimoto, in Journal of Asian Studies (Nov. 1979), Association for Asian Studies, 1 Lane Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48109.
"Fascist," with its overtones of racism and repression, is a word often used to describe Japan just before World War 11. It is a word wrongly used, say Duus and Okimoto, Asia specialists at Stanford.
The mass movements, personality cults, and bloody purges that marked fascism in Germany, Italy, and Hungary...
Peter Prewar Japan DUUS and Daniel I. Okimoto, in Journal of Asian Studies (Nov. 1979), Association for Asian Studies, 1 Lane Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48109.
"Fascist," with its overtones of racism and repression, is a word often used to describe Japan just before World War 11. It is a word wrongly used, say Duus and Okimoto, Asia specialists at Stanford.
The mass movements, personality cults, and bloody purges that marked fascism in Germany, Italy, and Hungary...
the year 2000, Australia is expected to ship 136 million tons of coal abroad, surpassing the United States as the world's leading exporter.
The half million tons of uranium oxide discovered in Australia since 1970 represent about 20 percent of known world reserves. During 1972-75, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's Labor government blocked most mining and prevented exports. Both aboriginies and most labor unions shared his concerns over environmental and safety hazards. But Liberal Malcolm Fraser,...
the 1890s, the Alliance persuaded the Kajar Shah to order a halt to all mistreatment and discrimination. But then the monarchy had little control over the clergy or local authorities. It was not until the last Shah's father, Reza Pahlavi, began a new dynasty in 1925 that religious tolerance became the law, strictly enforced.
Looking Beyond 'Disunity Africa Africa" by Anthony J.
Hughes, in in EastReport (Nov.-Dec. 1979), Idim ~r~nsaction, State
Inc., Rutgers-The
University, New Brunswick,...
Book Reviews
by Paul Kleppner
Univ. of N.C., 1979
424 pp. $2 1
by Edward Schillebeeckx
Seabury, 1979
767 pp. $24.50
by Michael Mandelbaum
Cambridge, 1979
277 pp. $14.95
by J. Wayne Flynt
Ind. Univ., 1979
206 pp. $12.95
by E. H. Gornbrich
Cornell, 1979
41 1 pp. $38.50
by Emmanuel Le Roy
Ladurie
Braziller, 1979
400 pp. $20
by Milton Lomask
Farrar, 1979
443 pp. $17.50
By Frank E. & Fritzie P.
Manuel
Harvard, 1979
912 pp. $25
by Paul Mazgaj
Univ. of N.C., 1979
281 pp. $19
by Norman Podhoretz
Harper, 1979
375 pp. $15
by Joseph Epstein
Oxford, 1979
204 pp. $11.95
by Edward F. Denison
Brookings, 1979
212 pp. $16.95 cloth,
$7.95 paper
by Sandra M. Gilbert and
Susan Gubar
Yale, 1979
719 pp. $25
edited by Leonard Michaels
and Christopher Ricks
Univ. of Calif., 1980
609 pp. $14.95
by Norma Evenson
Yale, 1979
382 pp. $30
by Jeffrey L. Meikle
Temple, 1979
249 pp. $17.50
by Jonathan R. Cole
Free Press, 1979
336 pp. $17.95
By Harold J. Morowitz
St. Martin's, 1979
265 pp. $10
By Edward W. Said.
Vintage reprint, 1979.368 pp. $4.95
By William Wharton. Avon reprint,
1980.343 pp. $2.50
By Isaiah Berlin.
Penguin reprint, 1979.312 pp. $3.95
By Richard
Hofstadter. Univ. of Chicago reprint,
1979.498 pp. $7.95
By Barrington Moore,
Jr. M. E. SharpIPantheon reprint, 1979.
540 pp. $7.95
Edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth.
Harper reprints, 1979. Boxed set, $12.95
Essays
such books as The Complete Book of Running (772,000 copies sold) and the American Heart Association Cookbook (400,000)-should help dispel them.
Some other statistics may seal the argument. During the 70s, 18 medical schools opened, and total enrollment jumped from 35,000 to nearly 64,000. The number of persons employed in "health services" grew from 4.2 million to more than 7 mil- lion. In terms of total spending, health care became the nation's third largest "industry" (after...
lth is as much a cultural value as an objective state of being. Among the Indians of one South American tribe, reports mi- crobiologist Ren6 Dubos, a skin ailment called pinto, is so pre- valent that the unaffected are considered to be ill. In China. health (jian-kang) is regarded as a matter of physical and psy- chic harmony. In France, santk is a quality one "possesses." Americans are of two minds. Since Colonial days, health has been associated with purity: of the soul, of food, of...
There is a certain cachet in the term "American doctor," much as there is in "Swiss banker," "French chef," or "Soviet dissident." Hardly a month goes by without a team of U.S. physicians flying off to perform delicate surgery on some ailing international celebrity. The Nobel Prize in medicine has long been dominated by Americans. A large share of the science news chronicles the achievements of our physicians. There is nothing wrong with such eminence. But...
A friend of mine, a biomedical scientist with responsibilities for the future of one of the country's major research institutions, sent me a memorandum recently containing a set of questions about the application of biological science to medical problems.
Heading the list was the hardest and the most embarrass- ing: What are some examples, he asked, of the usefulness of the biological revolution itself, beginning with the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA in 1953 and culminating...
historians, and few good general histories exist today.
One of them is A Short History of Medicine (Oxford, 1928; 2nd ed., 1962). Author Charles Singer reckons that not until the 1500s did Euro- pean medical science attain the level of sophistication reached the Greeks in the 6th century B.c., nota-bly in their studies of anatomy and physiology.
When Europeans ventured to the New World, they brought their med- icine (as well as smallpox and measles) with them.
In a well-written textbook, Public...
, "capital- ism has disappeared from a large part of the earth." Gone, too, is the capitalist's euphoria-and clear conscience-of the early 19th century. Is capitalism an endangered species? What kind of animal is it? What are its origins? In his monumental Civilisa- tion Matirielle, Economic, et Capitalisme, completed in late 1979 and published in France earlier this year, Braudel describes to- day's capitalism in terms of the big banks, big financiers, and multinational corporations that...
"The present," writes Fernand Braudel in the third and final volume of his Material Civilization and Capitalism, "is largely the victim of a stubborn past bent on self-preservation." That remark is one key to a broad vision of history.
When Fernand Braudel became an editor of the French his- torical journal Annales: Economies, Sociitis, Civilisations in 1948, and when in 1956 he was named director of the 6th Sec- tion of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, France's most...
Long Life
Capitalism as a potential force emerges from the dawn of history, developing and perpetuating itself over centuries. Well in advance, there were signs heralding its arrival: the take-off of cities and exchanges, the appearance of a labor market, popula- tion density, the diffusion of money, long-distance trade.
When India, in the first century of our era, seized the far-off Indies, or at least penetrated it; when Rome held the entire Mediterranean and more under its sway; when China,...
the so-called classical economists-Adam Smith (1 723-90), David Ricardo (1772-1823), and John Stuart Mill (1806-73).
In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(1776), Smith, reacting to the high tariffs and other restrictions of 18th-century mercantilism, advo- cated laissez faire-the doctrine that governments should end ail re-straints on trade and prices. The re- sult, he argued, would benefit both individuals and, in the aggregate, the public. Ricardo, in Principles...
. "An' yet," replied his friend Mr. Dooley, " 'tis not more than two months ago since ye learned whether they were islands or canned goods." Today, the Commonwealth's 3.3 million Spanish-speaking inhabitants are U.S. citizens who do not vote in U.S. elections or pay federal taxes. Operation Boot- strap-the promising drive for economic growth launched in the 1950s-stalled during the '70s. Unemployment now hovers around 20 percent; only massive subsidies from Washington prevented...
's mountainous interior.
When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Finley Peter Dunne's comic Mr. Hennessey urged prompt acquisition of Cuba and Puerto Rico. "An' yet," replied his friend Mr. Dooley, " 'tis not more than two months ago since ye learned whether they were islands or canned goods." Today, the Commonwealth's 3.3 million Spanish-speaking inhabitants are U.S. citizens who do not vote in U.S. elections or pay federal taxes. Operation Boot- strap-the promising...
is an anomaly with no true counterpart anywhere in the world. The island's economy is hostage to this circumstance. It is a victim, too, of nature. Puerto Rico has virtually no natural resources. It is self-sufficient only in people, of whom it has long been a net exporter. For other resources it must rely on the outside world, primarily the United States, its chief trading partner for nearly 100 years.
Like Taiwan and South Korea, Puerto Rico faced a postwar challenge. It had to devise an economic...
There are perhaps 2 million Puerto Ricans-island-born or, increasingly, mainland-born children of migrants-now living in the continental United States. They account for less than 1 percent of the total U.S. population and for less than one- quarter of all citizens of Hispanic origin living on the mainland.
Yet their presence is keenly felt. and large, they are clus- tered in a handful of cities: New York and its environs (the main point of entry for the 800,000 Puerto Ricans-one-third of the...
Once, after World War 11, policymakers and economists saw the massive Puerto Rican migration to the United States as a partial and temporary solution to the island's poverty and un- employment (as well as a cheap source of labor in the fields and factories of the U.S. mainland). The migrants, too, often saw their sojourn as temporary, hoping to return someday to Puerto Rico and buy a house and a small plot of land, a parcela.
For many of the migrants, this hope foundered on reality. Instead,...
historian Adalberto Lopez-in
Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans: Studies in History and Society
(Wiley, 1974), edited Lopez and James Petras-provide a useful overview.
Lopez notes that as a result of war- fare with the Spaniards and of smallpox epidemics, the island's population declined drastically from an estimated 30,000 after the Spanish arrived to a few thousand by 1520. Labor shortages led to the im- portation of black African slaves.
Life for the slaves in Puerto Rico was "short, nasty...
public agencies and private institutions
"The 1971-1974 Controls Program and the Price Level: An Econometric Post-Mortem."
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cam- bridge, Mass. 02138. 37 pp. Authors: Alan S. Blinder and William J. Newton
If the "New Economic Policy" fol-lowed the Nixon administration from 1971 to 1974 is any indication, mandatory wage-price controls alone cannot significantly curb inflation, say Princeton economists Blinder a...
One hundred years ago, 50 million paign literature (one for each eligible
Americans approached a presiden-voter).
tial election with an eager anticipa- The year 1880 was a time for op- tion that our more jaded age can timism and enthusiasm. Memories of scarcely hope to match: a bitter Civil War were beginning to %* In tiny Warren, Ohio (popula- fade; a deep economic depression, tion: 4,428), 40,000 people turned out which had begun in 1873 and stirred in late September to hear New the nation's...
J. D. Salinger:
Writing As Religion
J. D. Salinger's last book, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, was published in 1963. His last New Yorker short story appeared in 1965. Since then, he has published nothing, even as his most famous book, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), continues to sell some 400,000 copies a year. The author of a recent article in the New York Times Magazine as-serted that Salinger "retreated to a New England fortress when he could no...
