Reading the Future

Table of Contents

In Essence

The reputation of government elites, which once formed the backbone of public service both in America and abroad, has fallen in recent years, and that may not be a good thing.

Politicians love to play the bipartisan card, but there's always something political at stake.

The popular view was always that FDR's ill-advised 1937 court-packing scheme nonetheless nudged the Supreme Court justices to alter their thinking on the New Deal, but change may already have been happening.

A military strategist believes major reforms are needed at the United Nations.

Does corporate giving help companies' bottom line? The real benefits remain elusive, as does the future of business charity.

The roots of the problems in America's corporate world may lie in their ownership structure, very different from the norm in the rest of the world.

Los Angeles has a long and sordid history of murder, a pattern that will likely be difficult to break.

Could a shift to the smaller format be the salvation for today's troubled American newspapers--or newsprint's last gasp?

_img_0.jpg"/> At bottom, Brinkley and lier. Two weeks later, he joined Kalman observe, this is a in a 5–4 ruling upholding a debate about how the major New Deal measure, the Supreme Court changes its National Labor Relations Act. mind. Is the Court (and the The "switch in time [that] law more generally) a creature saved nine," as a wit of the day of politics, as legal realists and put it, removed the Court as other thinkers of progressive an obstacle to New Deal legis bent have argu...




IN ESSENCE

The Catholic Church has said that intelligent design is a scientific question, beyond the capacity of theology to answer.

Book Reviews

A MAN WITH
NO TALENTS:
Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer.
By Oyama Shiro. Translated by Edward Fowler.
Cornell Univ. Press.
139 pp. $21

THE FUTURE WITHOUT A PAST:
The Humanities
in a Technological Society.
By John Paul Russo.
Univ. of Missouri Press. 313 pp. $39.95

CHINA’S RISE
IN ASIA:
Promises and Perils.
By Robert G. Sutter.
Rowman & Littlefield. 297 pp. $24.95

PROTECTING LIBERTY IN AN AGE OF TERROR.
By Philip B. Heymann and Juliette N. Kayyem.
MIT Press. 194 pp. $30

ON THE ICE:
An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
By Gretchen Legler.
Milkweed Editions.
195 pp. $15.95

THE CUTTER
INCIDENT:
How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led
to the Growing Vaccine Crisis.
By  Paul A. Offit.
Yale Univ Press.
238 pp. $27.50

THE PRISON ANGEL:
Mother Antonia’s Journey From
Beverly Hills
to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail.
By Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan.
Penguin. 237 pp. $24.95

T. S. ELIOT: The Making of an American Poet, 1888-1922. By James E. Miller Jr. Pennsylvania State Univ. preG.468 pp. $39.95

Essays

The effort to think systematically about the future began little more than a half-century ago, and the results so far have not been impressive. Today’s futurists hope that more sophisticated methods will allow them to provide a better picture of what tomorrow may bring.

David Rejeski & Robert L. Olson

The celebrated American faith in the future was matched in the past by a willingness to sacrifice for a better tomorrow. Today, the faith endures but the commitment to sacrifice is in doubt.

Martin Walker

Decades ago, many population statistics seemed to point toward global calamity. Today, the world’s population is indeed much larger—but it is also much healthier, better educated, and richer. Therein lies a lesson in the use and misuse of numbers.

Nicholas Eberstadt

Will better intelligence and technology allow the United States to anticipate future terrorist attacks? History does not offer much reason for optimism, but there are steps we can take now.

Richard K. Betts

Nearly anyone today can inscribe his name for eternity on the Web or have it chiseled in brick at his alma mater. Has the 21st century finally delivered immortality for all?

Andrew Stark

How we choose to think about what lies ahead may be more important in creating a future we can comfortably inhabit than all the technological change tomorrow will bring.

Edward Tenner

The next 30 years may represent a watershed in human affairs.

Stephen M. Younger

Browse Our Issues