Saudi Arabia
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IODICALS
Reviws of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and ubroud
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
15
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
33
FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE
20
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
36
ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS
25
RESOURCES & ENVIRONMENT
41
SOCIETY
27
ARTS &LETTERS
45
PRESS & TELEVISION
3 1<...>
conservative Republicans.
"Political Parties and Presidential Ambi- tion" James W. Ceaser, in The Journal of ~olitics (Aug. 1978), University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla. 3261 1.
Political parties, long a central feature of America's form of govern-
ment, are exercising a waning influence over both the selection of Pres-
idents and their behavior once in office, thanks in part to recent party
reforms instituted in the name of "direct democracy" and greater
"fairness"...
Walter Dean Burnham, in Welfare Stale The Washington Ra'iav of Strategic and
International Studies (July 1978), Trans-
action Periodicals Consortium, Rutgers
University, New Brunswick, NJ. 08903.
The specter of "ungovernability" has come to haunt Western politi-
cians and intellectuals in the 1970s.
Today's predicament in the United States, Britain, Italy, and other
Western countries is ultimately the by-product of severe strains in ad-
vanced capitalist societies, says Burnham, an M...
Walter Dean Burnham, in Welfare Stale The Washington Ra'iav of Strategic and
International Studies (July 1978), Trans-
action Periodicals Consortium, Rutgers
University, New Brunswick, NJ. 08903.
The specter of "ungovernability" has come to haunt Western politi-
cians and intellectuals in the 1970s.
Today's predicament in the United States, Britain, Italy, and other
Western countries is ultimately the by-product of severe strains in ad-
vanced capitalist societies, says Burnham, an M...
burning interior cabin materials, such as decorative draperies and polyvinyl fluoride ceiling pa~lels.
The danger related to the burning of interior cabin materials, say Hill and Borenstein, has been recognized as a safety hazard airplane manufacturers and airlines at least since 1966; yet no rules setting safe toxic gas and smoke en~ission levels for these materials have been de- veloped, much less adopted.
The failure of seats and the tiedown mechanism by which they are attached to the aircraft...
becoming involved in speculative areas not subject to
strict cost-benefit analysis and that emphasis on the "timeliness" of its
studies will result in excessive haste and errors. Congressional critics,
including House Appropriations Committee Chairman George Mahon
(D-Tex.) fear that involvement in program evaluation will drag the
GAO into political battles and impair its independence and judgement.
Since 1970, Congress has refused to grant the GAO new authority
(e.g., subpoena power...
Philip Morrison and Paul F. Walker, in
Deterrent Scientific American (Oct. 1978),4 15 Madi-
son Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017.
Since 1945, the United States has invested more than $2 trillion in its military establishment and, despite Soviet gains, stands today as the world's foremost military power. While pressures are mounting for the deployment of more costly weapons, Morrison, an M.I.T. physicist, and Walker, a research Fellow in Harvard's Program for Science and Inter- national Affairs, argue...
Philip Morrison and Paul F. Walker, in
Deterrent Scientific American (Oct. 1978),4 15 Madi-
son Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017.
Since 1945, the United States has invested more than $2 trillion in its military establishment and, despite Soviet gains, stands today as the world's foremost military power. While pressures are mounting for the deployment of more costly weapons, Morrison, an M.I.T. physicist, and Walker, a research Fellow in Harvard's Program for Science and Inter- national Affairs, argue...
Douglas J. Bonnet, Jr., in Foreign
Affairs (Fall 1978), 428 East Preston St.,
Foreign Policy Baltimore, Md. 21202.
The U.S. Congress is now intimately involved in foreign policy and likely to remain so, whether it likes it or not, says Bennet, Assistant Secretary of State for congressional relations. "Presidents and Con- gresses of the future will find themselves thrust together in a tar-baembrace on the central international issues of their times, each unable to abdicate its responsibilities...
Douglas J. Bonnet, Jr., in Foreign
Affairs (Fall 1978), 428 East Preston St.,
Foreign Policy Baltimore, Md. 21202.
The U.S. Congress is now intimately involved in foreign policy and likely to remain so, whether it likes it or not, says Bennet, Assistant Secretary of State for congressional relations. "Presidents and Con- gresses of the future will find themselves thrust together in a tar-baembrace on the central international issues of their times, each unable to abdicate its responsibilities...
Captain Daniel de Beaujeu, the
French repeatedly tried to an~bush Braddock's forces during June but
found the advancing British troops too alert. Then, on July 9, 1755, the
British vanguard, a compact column of regulars with a few scouts out
in front, encountered a force of Frenchmen, Canadians, and Indians
head on. The latter reacted faster, quickly deploying along both flanks
of the British colun~n and seizing a strategic height.
The British vanguard withdrew under fire and collided with...
U.S. tactics.
Kiser, a research consultant in Soviet affairs, attacks the basic prem- ise of Huntington's linkage proposal-the presumed U.S. technological superiority over the Russians. (U.S. engineering firms, he says, have been buying Soviet pipe welding technology superior to anything in the West.) Russia's technological "unevenness," he says, needs to be better understood if the "technology gap" is to be more than a self-deceiving
U.S. political slogan.
"The Thrill...
John Kenneth Galbraith, in Journal of Post Keynesian Economics (Fall 19781, M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 901 North Broadway, White Plains, N.Y. 10603.
The new "post Keynesian" economics assumes that modern Western society is in a process of continuous, organic, and beneficent change. The most significant recent change has been the radical decline in the influence of supply and demand as a regulatory force over wages and prices-something that came about through the maturing of industrial society...
urging such things as less government regulation, the abandonment of farm subsidies, or the lowering of the minimum wage. Or, they can accept the decline of the market and concentrate on how to make economic performance serve as many interests as possible. That, says Galbraith, is "what post Keynesian economics is about."
"'Who, Me?': Jail As An Occupational Hazard" S. Prakash Sethi, in The
for Executives Wharton Magazine (Summer 1978), P.O. Box 58 1, Martinsville Center,...
A. H. Raskin, in The Nation (Sept. 9, 1978), 333 Sixth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10014.
American organized labor is in trouble. The number of union dues- payers is declining (one in four workers now belongs to a union, com- pared with one in three at the end of World War 11). Labor's hopes of reversing this trend through a 1978 Labor Reform Act were shattered successful corporation lobbying in the Senate.
Signs of union distress are everywhere, writes Raskin, former New York Times labor reporter. Management...
IODICALS
ECONOMICS, LABOR, & BUSINESS
UnionDistress "It Isn't Labor's Day" A. H. Raskin, in The Nation (Sept. 9, 1978), 333 Sixth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10014.
American organized labor is in trouble. The number of union dues- payers is declining (one in four workers now belongs to a union, com- pared with one in three at the end of World War 11). Labor's hopes of reversing this trend through a 1978 Labor Reform Act were shattered by successful corporation lobbying in the Senate.
Signs o...
the husband (A.I.H.) on the grounds that it converted mar- riage and the home into a biological laboratory. Subsequently, how- ever, many scholars and religious leaders have distinguished between the unitive and the procreative aspects of marriage (which Pius XI1 deemed inseparable), maintaining that A.I.H. can be seen as comple- tion rather than replacement of sexual intercourse. The Bishop of Cork, for example, has no objection to the test tube method "if there is no other possible way for...
6 The Figure below reoresents a network of one-way traffic lanes If the traffic divides equa!l/ at intersections where there are aifernative directions SPd in one hour 512 cars enter the traffic pattern at point B, how many cars will leave via Y7
bB+L
-v
(A) 128 (0)192 (C)256 fD) 320 (E) 384
Above is a sample question from the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The correct
answer is "(E)384."
dents began to defy authority more openly than in the past. Educators,
seeking to accommodate stu...
a $1 billion reduction in the use of federally insured student loan funds. A more realistic estimate, based on the assumption that TAF would be three times as popular as conventional loan programs, is $4.5 billion, less the $1 bil- lion in current use of federal funds. Silber estimates that the fund would be self-perpetuating within 20 years on the strength of annual repayments and the interest earned on those repayments put aside in a trust fund. TAF would aid the financing of all higher education,...
letting potential felons know what to
expect. Setting priorities and concentrating on cases of widest social
benefit is common sense, he says; "what is surprising is that it took
[police and prosecutors] so long to realize this."
PRESS & TELEVISION
"Without a Champion" Lyle Dennis-ton, in The Quill (Sept. 1978), 35 E. Wacker Dr., Chicago, 111.60601.
The Supreme Court term which ended on July 3, 1978, was a near disaster for the nation's news media. In seven major rul...
Max M. Kampelman,
or Else! in Policy Review (Fall 1978), 513 C St.
N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002.
The relatively unrestrained power of the news media may be a greater challenge to American democracy than the power of Congress and the Presidency, contends Kampelman, a Washington attorney, prominent Democrat, and former professor of political science at the University of Minnesota.
As the major media organizations have grown more powerful, they have also become more business and profit-oriented...
James
mp2derSto Behold Monaco, in American Film (Nov. 1978).
P.O. Box 966, Farmingdale, N.Y. 1 1737.
The history of nonprint media-film and broadcasting-has always
been governed two basic forces: technology and economics, mixed
occasionally with some politics. It is well to keep this in mind, says
Monaco, editor of Celebrity and Media Culture, as the electronic media
revolution propels us toward "the bright age of neovideo."
Cable television promises to give us (by 1984) a "wired...
James
mp2derSto Behold Monaco, in American Film (Nov. 1978).
P.O. Box 966, Farmingdale, N.Y. 1 1737.
The history of nonprint media-film and broadcasting-has always
been governed two basic forces: technology and economics, mixed
occasionally with some politics. It is well to keep this in mind, says
Monaco, editor of Celebrity and Media Culture, as the electronic media
revolution propels us toward "the bright age of neovideo."
Cable television promises to give us (by 1984) a "wired...
IODICALS
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
Most journalists blamed the split on the decision of the Church's 1976 General Convention to allow the ordination of women to the priest- hood. Seabury, a Berkeley political scientist and a descendant of America's first Episcopalian bishop, thinks the factional schism repre- sents a more fundamental rift between Episcopal clergy and laity. Both bishops and ministers, he says, led the Church toward increasing sec- ularization as they joined political and social c...
Baruch in Abortion Brody, and "Enacting ~eli~iou~~eliefs
in a Pluralistic Society" Frederick S. Jaffe, in The Hustings Center Report (Aug. 1978), 360 Broadway, Hastings-on- Hudson, N.Y. 10706.
Is abortion a religious issue? No, says Brody, a philosopher at Rice University. Opposition to abortion need not be, and frequently is not, based upon any religious beliefs-any more than opposition to torture in Brazil becomes a religious position just because that opposition is led by Catholic...
religious lead- ers, and taught religious institutions.
In the current debate over the federal funding of abortions, says Brody, the issue of separation of church and state is being raised by pro-abortion groups as an excuse to disregard the legitimate rights of believers. Jaffe disagrees. Laws embodying religious beliefs (e.g., restrictions on federal funding of abortions) should be enacted only when the beliefs are very broadly shared, he says. When there are ir- reconcilable differences on issues...
IODICALS
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
These signposts are human leukocyte antigens (HLA)-protein
molecules that float in the cell membrane and trigger a rejection re-
sponse to foreign substances, such as organ transplant~. The antigens
also signal the presence of genes that make a person susceptible to
certain diseases. Scientists have found eight kinds of antigens that are
associated-singly or in combination-with more than 40 afflictions
ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to juvenile diabetes.
The H...
Sherwood L. Washburn, in Scientific American (Sept. 1978), 415 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017.
The study of human evolution has undergone radical change in the last 30 years, thanks to new fossil finds, improved understanding of radio- active isotope dating, and revelations in plate tectonics (e.g., that the great land masses of Africa and South America were once quite close). And the application of new specialties, such as molecular anthropology and field observation of primate behavior, offer...
IODICALS
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
more closely related to the African apes than to other primates, says
Washburn, professor of physical anthropology at Berkeley. On the basis
of comparisons between their protein chains, some scientists estimate
that man and the chimpanzee share more than 99 percent of their genetic
material.
Meanwhile, new field studies of chimpanzees and their use of sticks
and other simple tools indicate that Peking Man, the first true man
(Homo erectus), who appeared a...
Louis G. Nickell, in Chemical and Engineering News (Oct. 9, 1978), 1155 16th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
The use of herbicides to increase crop yields controlling weed growth has had a major impact on modern agriculture. Now, another family of agrochemicals-the so-called plant growth regulators- promises even more startling results.
Plant growth regulators, writes Nickell, vice president of research and development for Velsicol Chemical Co., are organic compounds (either natural or synthetic)...
IODICALS
RESOURCES & ENVIRON
"Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis" bv Albert A. Bartlett. in American Jour~zulof Physics (Sept. 1978), 335 East 45th St., New York, N.Y. 10017.
When the consumption of a resource, such as oil or coal, is growing at a fixed rate per year, the growth is said to be exponential and consumption doubles at predictable intervals. We are ignoring the arithmetic of expo- nential growth at our peril, says Bartlett, physicist at the University of Colorado, B...
IODICALS
RESOURCES & ENVIRON
"Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis" bv Albert A. Bartlett. in American Jour~zulof Physics (Sept. 1978), 335 East 45th St., New York, N.Y. 10017.
When the consumption of a resource, such as oil or coal, is growing at a fixed rate per year, the growth is said to be exponential and consumption doubles at predictable intervals. We are ignoring the arithmetic of expo- nential growth at our peril, says Bartlett, physicist at the University of Colorado, B...
winderosionin the 1950s*hartduring thef930s.
"'l'he Mew Soviet Environmental Pro-gram: Da dieSoviets Really Mean Bud-ness?"by^UDe,QmofeU,towArf-icy CSuirnpW-PRQ,Joanab Dcpt., John Wifey &Sora,,W.,605 ThirdAve-, New YflA N.K. -6;
hi 1973, the Soviet ~nion~aulicheditsfiÃ?Ë?itbq@@ inthe-Moacow
program,&me^ environmental
especially at irnpttwil^-w,quaBty
area and the tttraiae, where 80 perm&(rf^fiet industrial and ag-ridtaral production is concentrated and where d...
declining catches of freshwater fish and outbreaks of cholera in southern river basins, Kremlin leaders added an environ- mental division to the State Planning Committee, consolidated en- forcement powers in the Ministry of Reclamation and Water Manage- ment (Minvodkhoz), and boosted funding (the equivalent of $1 l billion for 1976-80).
Deterioration of the Volga River has been halted and Moscow's water quality slightly improved, writes Gustafson, a Harvard government professor, but the clean water...
pumping surface waters from the Arctic Basin through the Bering Strait to the Pacific, therepulling the warm waters of the Atlantic through the Arctic and making worldwide ocean temperatures more uniform.
ot Satellites "Don't Look Now But . . .: The Soviet Satellite Accident and Some Lessons
in Space from It" by Milton Leitenberg, in Com-monweal (Sept. 15, 1978), 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016.
Until recently, public attention has been focused on the peaceful and scientific...
Marion Muller, in
The New Leader (Sept. 25, 1978), 212 Fifth
Ave., New York, N.Y. 10010
Americans are being inundated with culture. The mass marketing of art
through highly-publicized special exhibits (e.g., the Mona Lisa in 1963,
Michelangelo's Pieta in 1964, the "Treasures of Tutenkhamun" in 1978)
has drawn such enormous crowds that the viewing public seldom has
more than a brief glimpse of what is being shown. (More than 1 million
people pay to see the "Tut" exhibit...
Marion Muller, in
The New Leader (Sept. 25, 1978), 212 Fifth
Ave., New York, N.Y. 10010
Americans are being inundated with culture. The mass marketing of art
through highly-publicized special exhibits (e.g., the Mona Lisa in 1963,
Michelangelo's Pieta in 1964, the "Treasures of Tutenkhamun" in 1978)
has drawn such enormous crowds that the viewing public seldom has
more than a brief glimpse of what is being shown. (More than 1 million
people pay to see the "Tut" exhibit...
noise-reduction system that
takes the hiss out of stereo tapes, FM radios, and records, and allows for
sharper high and low tones (like the ominous low rumbling of the
mother ship in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind).
Walter Murch, who created the beautifully intricate "sounds track" of George Lucas's film, The Conversation, believes that the technical potential of film sound has been reached-now it is up to the movie directors to exploit it. With a general upgrading...
the shape
that's in your head, and never mind the one that's before your eyes."
Mark Twain's greatest work, writes Burde, was that which "drew
upon intuitive memory rather than studied observations." There was a
connection between writing and piloting-both require a special qual-
ity of memory-and Clemens dreaded the thought of failing as a writer
and being forced to make his living again as a pilot. He was unable to
sustain his imaginative identification with Horace Bix(who...
some U.S. investors in the early 1970s. The internal mismanagement, corruption, and bureaucratic red tape of the military-backed regime in Jakarta cannot be overlooked. However, the authors conclude, "It would seem a major setback for the West if Suharto's New Order, which gambled on the West, were to fall short of its goal because the West fell short of its promise."
China ' Economy' "Industrial Development in China:
1967-76 and 1976-78" Jan S. Prybla,
i?ro.~pectsGood in...
Her- Enmgy: Key to bert s.Levine and Daniel L. Bond, in The I~ASS~Z'S Wharton Magazine (Summer 19781, P.O.
Future
Box 58 1, Martinsville Center, Mar-tinsville, N.J. 08836.
For ten years, the Soviet Union has relied on Western technology to boost the sagging productivity of its domestic industries and massive purchases of grain to offset the failure of Soviet agriculture. Economists Levine, of the University of Pennsylvania, and Bond, of Stanford Re- search Institute, contend that this pattern wil...
Jonathan Kozol, in Harvard
Socialism Educational Review (August 1978),
Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cam- bridge, Mass. 02138.
In September 1960, Fidel Castro publicly vowed to teach more than 1 million illiterate adult Cubans to read and write in 12 months. The literacy campaign that followed, says Kozol, a visiting lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was not only "a pedagogical victory unparalleled in the modern world" but helped turn Cuba into a socialist country.
Kozol...
living with the country's rural poor. The literacy campaign, says Kozol, turned "uto- pian kids" into "incipient socialists."
"The Palestinian Factor in the Lebanese
cysts Civil War" Michael C. Hudson, in The
of Tragedy Middle East Journal (Summer 1978), 1761
N Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Between February 1975 and November 1976, some 50,000 people were killed in Lebanon in a civil war in which Palestinians played a major role-as catalysts, combatants,...
Bt Howard Nemerov
Univ. of Chicago, 1977
534pp.$20
LofC 77-544
by Pierre-Jakez Helias
Yale, 1978, 378 pp. $15
L of C 78-6929
by Karl Rahner.
Seabury, 1978
485pp.$19.50
L of C 77-13336
by Martin Weil
Norton, 1978, 313 pp. $12.95
L of C 77-25104
by John M. Mulder
PI-inceton, 1978
306 pp. $16.50
LofC77-72128
by Simone Petrement
Pantheon, 1977, 577 pp.
$15 cloth, $5.95 paper
L of C 76-9576
by Richard Smoke
Harvard, 1977
(released 1978)
419pp.$18.50
L of C 77-6248
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Brazilier, 1978
403 pp. $20
LofC 77-6124
by Peter Calvocoressi
Pantheon. 1978
253 pp. $8.95
L of C 77-90401
Jerrold Seigel
Princeton, 1978
460 pp. $16.50
LofC77-85563
By Paula Blanchard
Delacorte. 1978
382 pp. $11.95
L of C 78-739
by June Namias
Beacon, 1978
320 pp. $12.95
LofC77-88345
by Michael Kernan
Braziller, 1978
170 pp. $7.95
L of C 77-94496
by Willy Brandt
Little, Brown, 1978
524 pp. $16.95
L of C 78-7595
by Susan Sheehan
Houghton Mifflin, 1978
285 pp. $10.95
L of C 78-27-28
by Steven Brill
Simon and Schuster. 1978
414pp.$11.95
Lof C78-16610
by Octavio Paz
Viking. 1978
218pp. $10.95
LofC78-17560
by Charles R. Larson
Univ. of New Mexico, 1978
208 pp. $9.50
LofC78-55698
by Roger Sale
Harvard, 1978
280 pp. $11
L ofC 78-18788
Atiantic-Little, Brown,
1978, 313 pp. $9.95
LolC78-54091
by Frederic Manning
St. Martin's, 1977
(released 1978)
247 pp. $8.95
Lof c 77-72368
by Edward O. Wilson
Harvard, 1978
272 pp. $12.50
LofC78-17675
by John Chancellor
Viking, 1978
224 pp. $17.95
LofC 78-8465
By Isaac Bashevis Singer. Farrar, 1957,
republished 1978. 205 pp. $4.95 (cloth$9.95)
By Sterling Wortman and Ralph W. Cummings, Jr. Johns Hop-
kins, 1978. 454 pp. $6.95 (cloth, $25)
By Hildred Geertz and Clifford Geertz.
Univ. of Chicago reprint, 1978. 226 pp. $3.95
By Iris Murdoch.
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By Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab.
Univ. of Chicago, 2nd ed., 1978.
605 pp. $7.95
Washington on Mideast matters; 30,000 Americans work in the arid kingdom on economic and military projects; 10,000 young Saudis study at universities in the United States. Even so, the Saudis remain a bit of a mystery, with their Islamic conservatism, their Bedouin ways, their quiet use of dollar di- plomacy in Africa and the Arab states. Here William Rugh re- views the kingdom's epic past and uncertain future; John Duke Anthony examines Saudi Arabia's cautious foreign policy; and David Long looks...
, the non- communist world's No. 1 oil producer, to the economic health of the West. Five years later, the Saudis are among the first to be consulted by Washington on Mideast matters; 30,000 Americans work in the arid kingdom on economic and military projects; 10,000 young Saudis study at universities in the United States. Even so, the Saudis remain a bit of a mystery, with their Islamic conservatism, their Bedouin ways, their quiet use of dollar di- plomacy in Africa and the Arab states. Here William...
as the world's pre-eminent Arab state stems mainly from the 1973 oil embargo. What outsiders perceived as a sudden occurrence, however, had in fact been evolving gradually over a period of several years. Indeed, the kingdom, under the leader- ship of King Faisal (r. 1964-75), had been playing a growing role in Arab summit gatherings since the disastrous June 1967 war against Israel.
By the end of 1967, the Saudis had patched up differences with Egypt that had led the two nations to lock horns...
is sitting on one-quarter of the world's oil. Of the globe's oil producers, it has the greatest potential for sustained, large-scale expansion of production capacity-the amount of oil it could be pumping. The kingdom's production capacity has been increasing steadily for some time. Between 1960 and 1977, the Saudi share of OPEC production doubled; Saudi Arabia also accounted for 40 percent of the total increase in world produc- tion between 1970 and 1977. Some 20 percent of U.S. oil imports come...
P. M. Holt et al. (Cambridge, 1970, 2 vols., cloth; 1977, 4 vols., paper). This work, hailed British and Ameri- can scholars, is a target of a slashing new attack on studies of Islam by Westerners. In Orientalism (Pan-theon, 1978), Edward W. Said, a Co- lumbia University professor of com- parative literature and winner of the first (1 976) Lionel Trilling Award for
The Wilson QuarterlyWinter 1979
92
criticism, writes that "none of the innumerable Orientalist texts on Is- lam, including their...
Black people in the United States are usually referred to as a more or less homogeneous group-by sociologists, newsmen, government officials, even their own leaders. But the history of black Americans is really the history of three distinct groups, whose descendants have very different incomes and occu- pations, and even different fertility rates, in the 20th century.
The first of these groups is the ante-bellum "free persons of color," who in the 1830s constituted 14 percent of the...
the editors, following an introduction the Smithsonian Institution's Paul Forman.
by Paul Forman
Albert Einstein comwosed tributes to manv individuals but to only three men he hadnever met-~ohannei~e~ler
(d.
1630), who formulated the laws of planetary motion; Isaac Newton (d. 1727), who derived those laws from general dynamic principles and a law of universal gravitation; and James Clerk Maxwell
(d.
1879), who, by a mathematical formulation of Michael Fara- day's concept of a physica...
Albert Einstein comwosed tributes to manv individuals but to only three men he hadnever met-~ohannei~e~ler
(d.
1630), who formulated the laws of planetary motion; Isaac Newton (d. 1727), who derived those laws from general dynamic principles and a law of universal gravitation; and James Clerk Maxwell
(d.
1879), who, by a mathematical formulation of Michael Fara- day's concept of a physical state pervading all matter and space (a "field"), obtained the laws of electromagnetism. For Ei...
It is just two hundred years ago that Newton closed his eyes. We feel impelled at such a moment to remember this brilliant genius, who determined the course of Western thought, research, and practice like no one else before or since. Destiny placed him at a turning point in the history of the human intellect: Before Newton, there existed no self-contained system of physical causality that was somehow capable of representing any of the deeper features of the empiri- cal world.
If',' , .. ,, -Newton's...
Peter Blake
It is not too difficult to figure out what has gone wrong: The theorists of modern architecture simply promised too much. They promised that modern buildings would be cheaper to build, solve the problems of war and peace, and put an end to social and economic injustice. Modern architecture promised bliss. But the so-called Modern Movement, the clean-lined, often massive, essentially urban, "skin-and-bones" architecture that developed in Europe and the United States between...
rovements in building materials, such as steel, glass, and concrete, have allowed architects to erect structures never before thought possible. The results have been mixed. Some modem buildings complement their environments while remaining aesthetic treats in themselves. Others seem to have been conceived by architects bent on erasing the distinction be- tween art and parody.
The Wihon QuarterlyIWinter 1979
120
The Swiss urban planner Le Corbusier regarded his own brand of high-rise, mass-produced...
HITECTURE
"Murky chaos" is how Philip Johnson saw the condition of architecture in 1960. But even one of America's most thoughtful architects could hardly have foreseen how much murkier the prospect would become.
Almost half of the qualified architects in the most depressed architectural centers, such as New York and San Francisco, are reckoned to have been unemployed in recent times. The profes- sion has yet to recover fully from the 1975-76 slump, when the value of all new construction...
GROUND BOO
Architects and builders have always had more in mind than mere shelter or work-and-storage space. Old and new buildings celebrate the glory of religions (the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, Chartres Cathedral); of gov- ernments (Britain's Houses of Par- liament, the Kremlin, the U.S. Capitol); of families (the Marl-boroughs' Blenheim Palace, the Rockefellers' Japanese house in Pocantico Hills, N.Y.).
Renowned designers and unknown masons have collaborated o...
public agencies and private institutions
"Winner Take All: Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Reform of the Presidential Election Process"
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 30 Irving Place, New York, N.Y. 10003. 82 pp.
$12.50 (cloth), $5.75 (paper). Author: William R. Keech.
U.S. presidential elections should be fair and democratic and should "max- imize the likelihood" that the candi- date with the most popular votes wins; they should encourage competi- ti...
ing the last decade, art sales have made headlines-the $5.54 million purchase of Velazquez's Juan de Pareja by the Met- ropolitan Museum of Art, for example. In 1970, it was the high- est price ever paid for a painting. Last June's $13.4 million sale of masterpieces from the Robert von Hirsch collection of Gothic, Romanesque, and Renaissance art was described as the largest one-day receipt in the history of art auctions. But in the late 1920s and '30s,a series of art sales of still unequalled magni-...
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Martin Droeshout's engraving of Shakespeare from the title page of the First Folio (1623).At the time, Ben Jonson was satisfied with the picture as a likeness, but some critics have since dubbed it a "pudding-faced effigy," asserting that the playwright appears to have two right eyes.
Shaw despised him, Lamb revered him, Freud didn't think he existed. William Shakespeare himself paid scant heed to pos- terity; he put a greater value on his contemporary status as the hometown...