Winter 1990
America's New City
In Essence
Joseph W. Alsop with Adam Platt, in The New York Review of Books (Nov. 9, 1989), 250 W. 57th St., New York, N.Y. 10107.
For 300 years, this country was ruled, if not always governed, a small White An- glo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) elite. George Bush notwithstanding, the WASPs as a group have not enjoyed an organized po- litical victory since the upright ladies of Mrs. Charles H. Sabin's Woman's Organi- zation for National Prohibition Reform helped put martinis back on the nation's tables in 1933.
Alsop, a...
Patrick Anderson, in Regardie's (Nov. 1989), 1010 Wisconsin Ave. N.W., Ste. 600, Washington,
Points of Bite D.C. 20007.
Patrick Anderson says he must have been "temporarily insane" when he first agreed to write a speech for a politician. He wrote it in the spring of 1976 for Jimmy Carter, then a candidate for the Democratic presi- dential nomination. Carter introduced this new "Kennedyesque" marvel woodenly informing an audience, "Now I'm going to read a statement my s...
Di-nah Wisenberg of the States News Service, in Common Cause Magazine (Sept.-Oct. 1989).
In the heat of [the 19881 presidential cam-paign, George Bush attacked Michael Duka- kis for espousing liberal policies "born in Harvard Yard's boutique." And he boasted to a Houston audience last June, "when I wanted to learn the ways of the world, I didn't go to the Kennedy School [at Harvard]. I came to Texas."
One year later, President Bush's Harvard- bashing days seem to be behind...
PERIODICALS
technological sophistication of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and federal prosecutors since the 1980 Abscam inves- tigation. In Mississippi, for example, 60 county supervisors went to jail recently for taking kickbacks after the FBI mounted a sophisticated "sting" operation. The FBI used high-tech "body wires" to build air- tight cases-the supervisors' own words- on tape.
Still, Witt concedes, new laws and tech- nology are not entirely to blame. Corrup-...
circumstance; welfare states, sheltered some are not. The ones most favored go first. Others follow. protectionism and other And as the pool is exhausted, the hard cases remain-not special arrangements. This only because of the misfortunes and misdeeds of history, but was a compromise Wash- because, for all manner of internal reasons, they do not take ington made when the out- to. . .new ways. They don't like them; they don't want them;
they are discouraged from learning them; if they learn them,...
Western business has shrunk, but commercial loans and sub- sidized loans from institu- tions like the World Bank have not. Overall, a re-markable $1.8 trillion in capital flowed into the Third World between 1956 and 1986. The only plausi- ble explanation, Eberstadt notes, is that Third World governments "are being held to a lower standard of economic performance than those facing their own citizens, international busi- nesses, or the governments of Western countries." That allows the govern-...
PERIODICALS
glorification of war, "which few of us would be willing to stomach."
Other critics have faulted Fukuyama for ignoring continuing threats to the liberal idea. True, he says, the communist world could abandon reform. But communism can never regain the moral authority that made it a worldwide challenge to liberal- ism. What about Islamic fundamentalism? "For all of Islam's pretensions of being a universal religion, fundamentalism has had virtually no appeal outside o...
three to one. Its research laboratories in both industry and the uni- versities are second to none.
Where the United States falls on its face, he argues, is in quickly translating basic research into "products and processes for designing, manufacturing, marketing and distributing such products." Experience seems to bear this out. American scientists invented the transistor, but in 1953 West- ern Electric licensed the technology to Sony. The rest is history. In 1968, another
U.S. firm,...
16 professionals and 44 support personnel at KKR.
Jensen says that LBOs make the most sense in mature industries-such as steel, chemicals, broadcasting, and brewing- where little further investment can be jus- tified. Public stock ownership still makes sense in fast-growth sectors where oppor- tunities outstrip company resources, such as computers and pharmaceuticals.
Private ownership of industry helped propel West Germany and Japan to eco- nomic success, Jensen believes. And to- day's corporate...
"Warning Symptoms" Ann Dudley ~o~dblatt,
in University of Chicago Magazine (Fall 1989), Robie House, 5757 S. Woodlawn Where Are YOU? Ave., Chicago, 111. 60637.
It is more than a slight exaggeration to say that doctors and patients now seem as likely to meet in court as in the consulting room. But the doctor-patient relationship is clearly not what it once was. How have things come to such a pass? Goldblatt, a lecturer in medical ethics at the University of Chicago, attributes it to a...
's] fear of sacred space, which is a fear of life lived what always appears to be the long odds of faith, goes with its reluc- tance to commit itself to the burden of distin- guishing between revitalizing fresh perspec- tives and faithless subversions. For lack of something worthy of reverential attention it must worship life in its precarious time-bound condition, which means that it must worship youthfulness.
lation by physicians, and perhaps no-fault malpractice insurance can help prevent doctors...
Dominic L. Lasorsa, in Journalism Quarterly (Summer 1989), Univ. of S.C., 1621 College St., College of Journalism, Columbia, S.C. 29208-
025 1.
Liberal critics were hopping mad in 1987 when ABC broadcast its tedious seven-part miniseries, Amerika. The miniseries' grim depiction of life in a Soviet-occupied United States, they exclaimed, would turn the American people into raving anti-So- viet Rambos. Although Lasorsa, a profes- sor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, does not m...
Dominic L. Lasorsa, in Journalism Quarterly (Summer 1989), Univ. of S.C., 1621 College St., College of Journalism, Columbia, S.C. 29208-
025 1.
Liberal critics were hopping mad in 1987 when ABC broadcast its tedious seven-part miniseries, Amerika. The miniseries' grim depiction of life in a Soviet-occupied United States, they exclaimed, would turn the American people into raving anti-So- viet Rambos. Although Lasorsa, a profes- sor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, does not m...
local policemen and Cincinnati Bell employees; a Columbus, Ohio, television station re-vealed Representative Donald "Buz" Lukens's (R.-Ohio) alleged sexual miscon- duct; the gambling charges against Pete Rose, manager of baseball's Cincinnati Reds, surfaced in Sports Illustrated and
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
three Ohio newspapers.
Anonymous sources were vital to the development of all three stories. If every journalist shared Blake's high standards, Winternitz says, these shenanigans wou...
Norman Golb, in The American Scholar (Spring 1989), 1811 Q Street N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20009.
When Edmund Wilson published
The
culture "than writers have been wont to
Scrolls from the Dead Sea in 1955, he pop- suggest." ularized-and, indeed, helped to ce-But why were documents containing ment-the established scholarly interpre- this important, if only transitional, shift in tation of their origins. Only 8 years before, Jewish thought buried th...
George Weigel, in The Washington QuarterlyFor Democracy (Autumn 1989), 1800 K st. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20006.
It seems entirely natural today to find the Catholic Church in the forefront of the struggle for human rights everywhere from Poland to South Korea. In fact, writes Weigel, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, the Church's "conversion" is relatively re- cent, and it is not without problems.
As late as 1864, Pope Pius IX rejected out of hand i...
George Greenstein, in Astron-omy (Oct. 1989), 21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612, Wau- kesha, Wise. 53187.
Is our universe only one among many? Is it theoretically possible to create a new universe in a laboratory-from 20 pounds of chopped liver?
Not long ago, scientists would have scoffed at such questions. Now, reports Greenstein, an Amherst astronomer, astro- physicists and others have begun taking them seriously because of the work of an MIT physicist named Alan Guth.
In 1981, Guth f...
Rick Weiss, in Science News (Sept.
A New Andromeda
23, 1989), 1719 N St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Strain?
What if the AIDS virus could spread as eas-ily as the common cold?
That horrifying possibility is not ruled out medical researchers, reports Weiss, a Science News correspondent. Viruses have recently been found to possess an alarmingly high propensity to mutation- once in every 10,000 replications. In 1983, Tenn. "There are millions of us 'chickens' just waiting to be infect...
Bhupendra Jasani and Martin Rees, in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Oct. 1989), 6042 S. Kimbark, Chicago, 111. 60637.
Space may be the Final Frontier, but it is also fast becoming the Ultimate Junkyard.
In addition to the roughly 350 active sat- ellites orbiting the Earth in "inner space," there are some 7,000 hefty pieces of space garbage-including upper stages of launchers, booster motors, and dead satel- lites. Far more hazardous are the 30,000- 70,000 pieces of junk, ranging...
Bhupendra Jasani and Martin Rees, in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Oct. 1989), 6042 S. Kimbark, Chicago, 111. 60637.
Space may be the Final Frontier, but it is also fast becoming the Ultimate Junkyard.
In addition to the roughly 350 active sat- ellites orbiting the Earth in "inner space," there are some 7,000 hefty pieces of space garbage-including upper stages of launchers, booster motors, and dead satel- lites. Far more hazardous are the 30,000- 70,000 pieces of junk, ranging...
!genetically engineering "supercucum- bers" to thrive in severe heat or "inject- ing" sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to reflect the sun's rays back into space. But the closer we move toward finding salva- tion in a "macromanaged" world, the more we hasten the end of nature.
But is there any way to quantify this dire forecast?
As it happens, McCloskey and Spalding, chairman and researcher, respectively, at the Sierra Club, recently completed a sur- vey of the...
Frederik ~ohl, in American Heritage
Birth of a Genre
(Sept.-Oct. 1989), 60 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10011.
Americans today are swamped inforrna- tion and speculation about science and technology. It was not always so. Fifty years ago, there was no Carl Sagan, no Nova (indeed, no television), no Discover
,,
magazine. Radio and newspaper coverage of science was skimpy. Pohl, a noted sci- ence fiction writer. speculates that "a ma-
r A
jority of the world's leading scientists to- da...
Richard Schickel, in the Gannett Center Journal (Summer 1989), Columbia Univ., 2950 The Story Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10027.
Consider the life cycle of a Hollywood film today. It begins with the selling of a brief story "concept" over drinks in Los Angeles and ends some years later as "word of mouth," when one moviegoer delivers a plot summary to her neighbor over the backyard fence.
All this talk of stories is a delusion, writes Schickel, a Time film critic. The tra- ditional...
Richard Schickel, in the Gannett Center Journal (Summer 1989), Columbia Univ., 2950 The Story Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10027.
Consider the life cycle of a Hollywood film today. It begins with the selling of a brief story "concept" over drinks in Los Angeles and ends some years later as "word of mouth," when one moviegoer delivers a plot summary to her neighbor over the backyard fence.
All this talk of stories is a delusion, writes Schickel, a Time film critic. The tra- ditional...
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PERIODICALS
cynicism, he says, has its origins in the aes- more than objects of consumerism. thetic theories of the Dadaist painter Mar- A booming art market and a generation cel Duchamp (1887-1968), who declared greedy for quick riches and fame have during the 1950s that artists produce only speeded the decline of art, Gray says. But a raw product; "it must be 'refined' as pure his particular peeve is the reproduction of sugar from molasses, the spectator art in 35-mm. slides now...
Paul Goble, in Problems of
Communism (July-August 1989) U.S. Information Agency, 301 Surprise 4th st. 5i.W., Washington, D.C. 20547.
Mikhail Gorbachev must dread reading Russian-born Gennadiy Kolbin in 1986, Pravda. Each day brings fresh news of eth- the appointment sparked mass demonstra- nic unrest in his country, whether it be tions. But Kolbin himself was soon forced Baltic states demanding their indepen- to become "more Kazakh than his Kazakh dence or Armenians and Azerbaijanis predecessor,"...
Sarvepalli Gopal, in Encounter (July-Aug. 1989), 44 Great Windmill St., London W1V 7PA, Great Britain.
In 1937, the Malagasy poet Jean Joseph Rabearivals killed himself in despair over his inability to reconcile his nationalism with his need to write in French. The reac- tion was extreme, but similar to that suf- fered people in many colonial lands, writes Gopal, a historian at Nehru College. India has been an exception.
The use of English has caused Indians no great discomfort in part because...
Book Reviews
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOUTHERN
CULTURE. Edited by Charles Reagan Wilson
and William Ferris. Univ. of North Carolina.
1634 pp. $49.95
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA: A Life. By Ian
Gibson. Pantheon. 551 pp. $29.95
A GERMAN IDENTITY, 1770-1990. By Harold
James. Routledge. 240 pp. $25
By Alistair
Home. Viking. 537 pp.; 741 pp. $24.95 each
Edited by Michel Feher with
Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi. Three
volumes. Zone. 480 pp.; 552 pp.; 578 pp. $39.95
(cloth); $16 (paper) each
By Sheldon M. Novick. Little,
Brown. 522 pp. 824.95
By Ezra F. Vogel. Haward. 510
pp. $29.95
By Hugh
Uhch. Chicago Review Press. 278 pp. $18.95
By Timothy Garton
Ash. Random House. 335 pp. $19.95
Edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher. Two
volumes. Library of America. 898 pp.; 787 pp.
$35 each
By Kaye Gibbons. Algonquin Books
of Chapel Hill. 146 pp.; 158 pp. $13.95 each
By Stephen J. Gould.
Norton. 347 pp. 119.95
By Michael Adas.
Cornell. 430 pp. $29.95
Essays
Something new is appearing on the American landscape. Architects, planners, and others have given it a variety of names-spread city, slurb, exurb, edge city, sprawl. The profusion of vaguely ominous names is only one sign of our deep uncertainty about what this new thing is. Is it merely the old suburb swollen beyond all proportion? Or are we seeing the distinction between city and suburb gradually being erased? Historian Robert Fishman believes that a "new city," utterly without precedent,...
Historian Robert Fishman believes that a "new city," utterly without precedent, is arising. If its opportunities are recognized, he argues, Americans' long quest to combine the amenities of technological civilization with the pleasures of natural surroundings may at last be
rewarded. If they are not, the failure will blight the landscape of America--and the lives of Americans--for generations to come.
it. His ideal was the medieval city, which he argued had been unjustly ma- ligned.
Our images of plague-ridden city dwellers clad in filthy rags come from a later era, Mum- ford argued. He insisted that life in the medi- eval city was generally healthy and fulfilling, rich in architectural beauty and civic life. Most important to him was the openness to nature that the cities' "clustered" housing made possi- ble. "Gardens and orchards, sometimes fields and pastures, existed within...
y fire or by ice? wondered Robert Frost. With a bang or with a whimper? wondered T.
S. Eliot. In the chronicles of our mortal race there may have been one or two people,
for example William ("I decline to accept the end of man") Faulkner, who did not concede that a bold Finis would one day be scrawled at the conclusion of the human saga. There may have been one or two who would not have been tempted-were only it possible!-to skip ahead to the final chap- ters of our story and discover ho...
The Greeks named Europe for the princess Europa, who, according to myth, so charmed Zeus that he transformed himself into a bull and carried her off from the Middle East to Crete.
Steven Lagerfeld describes the journey to European Unity; Josef Joffe points to
the formidable obstacles that remain.
Three years from now, on January 1, 1993, Western
Europe will be "born
again." The 12-state Euro-
pean Community (EC) will
turn into the Single Inte- grated Market (SIM). This new creation will unite some 320 million people with a com- bined gross domestic product of about five trillion dollars and will stretch from Cork to Calabria, from the Atlantic to the Ae- gean. As a trading bloc, it will surpass all others in the world. Even today, the (exter- nal) exports of the EC dwarf...
Frank D. McConnell
Apopular joke defines com- professionals-is at the center of a vitu- edy as the second oldest perative debate that has been raging on profession, which, like the American and British campuses for at least first, has been ruined am- a decade. ateurs. The debate may sound like an esoteric I would suggest that the academic squabble. But it has serious im- truly oldest profession is poetry-or plications for the future of humanistic storytelling, or mythmaking, or whatever studies...
For all the academic ink de- voted to the subject of revolu- tion, history is rarely discon- tinuous, rarely an affair of dramatic leaps or breaks. While rhetoric and the emo-tional environment can shift quickly, the actual workings of a society usually change at about the same rate as the pro- verbial freight train. Just the same, there are occasional turning points in any na- tion's life, when the engine crests a hill or enters a deep curve. The train remains a' train-momentum intact-but thanks...
Inever knew anyone quite like my father, but then I never really knew
my father either. He was a man
without a single vice, but with a
hundred foibles. He was a "de-
voted" husband in a miserably un- happy marriage. He was embarrassingly proud of me and advertised my small aca- demic triumphs by stopping fellow Tul- sans on the street to show them newspaper clippings, and he thermofaxed my letters home to give to passing acquaintances. Yet he never once praised me to my face: Wh...
two percent annually through the early 1980s. The
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimates that the So- viet military now consumes a staggering 15 to 17 percent of the Soviet gross national prod- uct. (US. military spending amounts to six percent of GNP.) Yet, Aslund notes, "it is difficult to find any informed Soviet citizen who believes in earnest that it is less than . . .22 to 30 percent."
Looking back at the Soviet's last major attempt at economic reform, in 1965, Aslund says...
