Spring 1990
Eastern Europe
In Essence
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and "Race-Neutral Programs and the Democratic Coalition" Wil- liam Julius Wilson, in The American Prospect (Spring 1990),
P.O. Box 7645, Princeton, N.J. 08543-7645, and "The Life of the Party" by Rep. Newt Gingrich, in Policy Review (Winter 1990), 214 Mass. Ave. N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002.
Has. the United States become a one-party state? Judging by these essays, written by leading lights on opposites sides of the U.S. political spectrum, you might t...
dozens of polls which they could ignore at little or no risk to their political future." That is what the British- born president of Louis Harris and Asso- ciates, Humphrey Taylor, writes in The Pub- lic Perspective (Jan.-Feb. 1990).
While they might not be rash enough to say so, virtually all British MPs would agree with Edmund Burke that "your representative owes you not his industry only but his judg- ment; and he betrays you, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."...
a two percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. Why do lotteries in- crease crime? Mikesell and Pirog-Good speculate that they may stimulate a taste for risk-taking or feelings of envy. They don't really know. But they do believe that when it comes to legalized gambling, the only sure bet is increased crime.
Presidents "The Pel"is of Presidentialism" Juan J. Linz, in Journal of Democracy (Jan. 1990), 1101 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C.and Parliaments 20005.
The democratic re...
Graham E. Fuller, in For-eim Policy (Spring 1990), 2400 N St. N.W. Washington, D.C.
The rebirth of Central Europe has dis- tracted attention from another rebirth of great importance: that of Central Asia.
Fuller, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, believes that the 50 million Muslims of Soviet Central Asia "will soon be reentering the broader Muslim world, creating an entire new calculus of Muslim power and regional blocs." Genuine au- tonomy for the Soviet Central Asian R...
Daniel Hirsch and William G. Mathews, The Bulletin of the Atomic Sci-
About Spies entists (Jan.-Feb. 1990), 6042 S. Kimbark Ave., Chicago, 111. 60637, and "The Limits of Manipulation: How the United States Didn't Topple Sukamo" H.W. Brands, in The Journal of American History (Dec. 1989), 112 N. Bryan St., Bloomington, Ind. 47401.
Time for some spy revisionism. One of the most dramatic espionage capers of the century never happened-and one of its most famous spies probably did more harm...
left-wing junior officers to eliminate conservative generalsÃ?â??1'Ameri can officials remained in doubt as to who Suharto was," writes Brands. He argues that Washington could not have engi- neered the coup: Declassified cables and memos show that the Americans never really knew what was going on in Jakarta. As late as October 13, for example, Secre- tary of State Dean Rusk noted: "We are not
at all clear as to who is calling the shots within the military." He instructed...
Robert B. Reich, in The Haward Business Review (Jan.-Feb. 1990), Boston, Mass. 02163.
"Across the United States, you can hear calls for us to revitalize our national com- petitiveness," writes Robert Reich, of Har- vard's Kennedy School of Government. "But wait-who is 'us'?" Is it the Ameri- can-owned and -managed firm that does most of its manufacturing overseas? Or is it, say, the Dutch-owned firm that does much of its research and development (R&D) and manufacturing in...
IODICALS
Tnei^i~~iJslW
ROCKSTTBS
The sale of Radio City Music Hall to a Japanese firm last fall seemed to symbolize a "Jap-anese invasion." But of the fi61 billion foreigners invested in the United States in 1989, only $13 billion came from Japan. Meanwhile, Americans invested $32 billion abroad.
terests ahead of corporate interests. (One caveat: Foreign firms that exist to serve na- tional interests, such as Airbus Industrie, should not enjoy equal treatment in the United States.)...
James Q. Wilson, in Commentary (Feb. 1990), 165 E. 65th St., New York, N.Y. The War on Drugs 10022.
Most Americans probably don't remember the nation's last war on drugs. We won it.
Wilson remembers it well. In 1972, he was appointed chairman of President Richard M. Nixon's National Advisory Council for Drug Abuse Prevention, charged with drawing up a strategy to combat what was at that time the nation's leading drug scourge: heroin. (Today, he is a political scientist at UCLA.) Then, as now, s...
James Q. Wilson, in Commentary (Feb. 1990), 165 E. 65th St., New York, N.Y. The War on Drugs 10022.
Most Americans probably don't remember the nation's last war on drugs. We won it.
Wilson remembers it well. In 1972, he was appointed chairman of President Richard M. Nixon's National Advisory Council for Drug Abuse Prevention, charged with drawing up a strategy to combat what was at that time the nation's leading drug scourge: heroin. (Today, he is a political scientist at UCLA.) Then, as now,...
his 5,000 subjects show that those who com- plain about feeling harassed do in fact spend more hours at work than the aver- age person does. But they also spend more time caring for their children and bathing and grooming themselves. They devote more time to watching and participating in sports, and they spend more time on organizational activities (except church- going). They spend much less time in front of the television, and somewhat less time sleeping, eating, or visiting friends.
Demographics...
Louis Menand, in The New Republic (Feb. 26, 1990), 1220 19th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Ask any long-time reader of the New
Yorker which articles he likes best and there is a good chance that he will delight- edly confess (whether it is true or not) that he does not read the thing, he just looks at the cartoons.
That, says Menand, a professor of Eng- lish at Queens College, is typical of the New Yorker style itself: self-effacing and unpretentious on the surface, sometimes a bit snob...
Louis Menand, in The New Republic (Feb. 26, 1990), 1220 19th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Ask any long-time reader of the New
Yorker which articles he likes best and there is a good chance that he will delight- edly confess (whether it is true or not) that he does not read the thing, he just looks at the cartoons.
That, says Menand, a professor of Eng- lish at Queens College, is typical of the New Yorker style itself: self-effacing and unpretentious on the surface, sometimes a bit snob...
PERIODICALS
Continuedfrompage 24
to find himself treated like a right-wing "troglodyte." One student at the nation's leading school of journalism even wanted to know why he thought it was so bad that Nicaragua's Sandinista government had shut down the nation's leading newspaper,
La Prensa!
It is only somewhat reassuring that Krauss admits that "10 years ago I might have been one of them myself." Yet how a self-described "left-liberal" journalist went to Central...
culture. Kojeve, Alexandre Koyrh, and Eric Weil, three superior intel-
But Rorty rejects the radi- lects "against whom I did not dare measure myself." Kojeve, cal social and political con- the most brilliant and most mysterious, gave a famous semi- clusions-a wholesale re-nar on Hegel's Phenomenology with a group of auditors that jection of the liberal, included Raymond Queneau, Jacques Lacan, Maurice bourgeois order-that the Merleau-Ponty, and occasionally Aron. His esoteric interpre-...
Fred Wilson, in The Centennial Review (Fall 1989), 110 Morrill Hall, Michigan The Philosopher State Univ., East Lansing, Mich. 48824-1036,
In 1826, John Stuart Mill was gripped what can only be called one of the most famous bouts of depression in the intellec- tual history of the West. At 20, he later wrote, his "love of mankind. ..had worn itself out." His despair was deepened by the oppressive influence both of his philos- opher-father, James, and of Jeremy Ben- tham. They advocated a...
two 18th-century thinkers, the Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord Kames: Moral and religious sentiments are not the product of associations that need to be analyzed; they come directly from ex- perience.
That perspective, says Wilson, is one of the things that gave Wordsworth's poetry its beauty. But it was beauty and philoso- phy both that revived the young John Stu-
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
art Mill and inspired him to reconcile "associationism" with Wordsworth's "ir-reducibility." In t...
Janet C. Hoeffel, in The Law Stanford Law Review (Jan. 1990), Stanford, Calif. 94305.
Police and prosecutors rejoiced in 1987 when DNA "fingerprinting" was intro-duced in the nation's courts. "If you're a criminal," one DNA analyst boasted, "it's like leaving your name, address, and social security number at the scene of the crime. It's that precise."
Far from it, retorts Hoeffel, a Stanford law student. DNA fingerprinting is danger- ously inexact.
Unfortunately,...
a panel of experts vested with the authority to establish uniform testing standards-if they find the tech- nique to be valid.
"The Tragedy of Needless Pain" Ronald Melzack, in Scien-Morphine 's Merits tific American (Feb. 1990), 415 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y.
The young soldier who becomes addicted to drugs because he received morphine for war wounds is a stock character in popu- lar mythology. But his like is seldom found in real life, says Melzack, a psychologist at McGill University.
For...
B. T. Mossman, J. Bignon, M. Corn, A. Seaton, and J.Over Asbestos? B. L. Gee, in Science (Jan. 19, 1990), 1333 Hst. N.w., Washing-
ton, D.C. 20005.
Environmental and health revisionism continues apace. Saccharine won't hurt you, and oat bran won't help you. "Nu- clear winter" would actually be more like nuclear autumn, and people who once worried about the next ice age now fret about the greenhouse effect. Now for the latest change: Asbestos in schools and other buildings is not a threat...
Thomas Eisner,
Nature's
in Issues in Science and Technology (Winter 1989-90), 2101 Medicine Chest Constitution Ave. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20418.
Even optimists now concede that plant and animal extinctions are going to occur at an alarming pace well into the next cen- tury. "We have yet to comprehend what it is we lose when species disappear," warns Eisner, a Cornell biologist. In the area of medicinal chemistry alone, he says, the implications are staggering.
Overall, nearly one...
Thomas Eisner,
Nature's
in Issues in Science and Technology (Winter 1989-90), 2101 Medicine Chest Constitution Ave. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20418.
Even optimists now concede that plant and animal extinctions are going to occur at an alarming pace well into the next cen- tury. "We have yet to comprehend what it is we lose when species disappear," warns Eisner, a Cornell biologist. In the area of medicinal chemistry alone, he says, the implications are staggering.
Overall, nearly one...
association." The critic Svetlana Alpers has argued that 17th-century Dutch artists used "proto-photographic" techniques; Heinrich Schwarz and Aaron Scharf have argued that the camera has "influenced the visual imagination of painters since the phy's flattening of space and its ability to capture ephemeral movements, for exam- ple, are said to have had a profound im- pact on the impressionists. Finally, photog- raphers overcame the handicap of the "infinite reproducibility"...
Samuel Beckett, were private and had no literary value. But Joycean scholars, Fromm notes, "maintained that any and all mate- rial about great writers like Joyce and Beckett belonged to the world, not the family." In fact, she recalls indignantly, when Stephen Joyce said that Beckett had told him to destroy the letters, Beckett's biographer Deirdre Bair "flatly insisted that Beckett had not meant what he said."
"If the sanctity of private life and the in- dividual is rejected...
Colin Legum, in The Washington Quarterly (Winter 1990), 1800 K St. N.w.. Washington, D.C. 20006,
Africa is on the verge of its second libera- tion. Three decades after they threw off the shackles of European rule, predicts Legum, a veteran journalist, many African countries are about to overthrow their "unpopular, unsuccessful, and undemo- cratic" postcolonial governments.
After achieving independence during the 1950s and '60s, most African countries adopted European-style parliamentary s...
Rensselaer W. Lee, in Society (Jan.-Feb.
Cocaine Politics
1990), Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, N.J.
Less than a year after the government of Colombia began its crackdown on the
"
country's cocaine traffickers, many Co- lombians are growing weary of the turmoil and bloodshed. According to a public- opinion survey conducted last fall, citizens favor a negotiated settlement with the country's cocaine mafia a two-to-one margin.
what may sound incredible to Ameri- cans is al...
Pablo Escobar, for ex- ample, claims that the "nation's face has been disfigured the imperialist boot of the [extradition] treaty." Such views have broad appeal in Colombia.
What Colombia and other Latin nations need most to combat the cocaine mafia is not weapons or helicopters and not stepped up extraditions, Lee concludes, but stronger and more effective courts, po- lice, and other civilian institutions.
'Underclass" by Charles Murray, in The Sunday Times Maga- zine (Nov. 26,...
Masao Miyoshi, in Raritan (Fall 1989), Rutgers University, 165 College Ave., New Brunswick,
N.J. 08903.
The written word is not faring well in Ja- als begin congratulating themselves, pan. But the problem is not that the mass Miyoshi cautions that they too have suc- of Japanese are badly schooled or illiter- cumbed to a form of "conversationalism": ate, writes Miyoshi, a professor of litera- the endless chatter of meetings, confer- ture at the University of California, San ences, and...
Book Reviews
THE EXAMINED LIFE: Philosophical Meditations.
By Robert Nozick. Simon and Schuster.
308 pp. $21.95
ALBION'S SEED: Four British Folkways in
America. By David Hackett Fischer. Oxford.
946 pp. $39.95
MOVING PICTURES. By Anne Hollander.
Knopf. 512 pp. $29.95
THE POWER OF IMAGES: Studies in the
History and Theory of Response. By David
Freedberg. Univ. of Chicago. 534 pp. $39.95
By Roger Morris. Holt.
1005 pp. $29.95
By Mark Nathan Cohen. Yale.
285 pp. $29.95
By Jon Butler. Harvard.
360 pp. $29.50
By Hugo Young. Farrar. 570 pp. $25
By Howard l? Chudacoff.
Princeton. 232 pp. $19.95
By Timothy W. Ryback. Oxford. 272 pp.
$21.95
By R. Jackson
Wilson. Knopf. 295 pp. $24.95
By John
Bertyman. Edited by Charles Thornbury. Farrar.
348 pp. $25
By Wole
Soyinka. Random. 262 pp. $18.95
By
James R. Bartholomew. Yale. 369 pp. $30
By Eli Ginzberg.
Harvard. 301 pp. $27.50
Essays
Ivan Sanders
nce upon a time there
was a region of Europe
united not so much by
language or even history
but something more
elusive-by hard-to-de-fine common sensibilities and affinities. What is referred to ever more longingly to- day as Central Europe has in reality always been a crazy quilt of nationalities inhabiting countries wedged between the vastness of Mother Russia and the paternal rigor of Germany. Yet, because many of these countries were for centuries under Aus- trian tutelage, th...
nce upon a time there
was a region of Europe
united not so much by
language or even history
but by something more
elusive-by hard-to-de-fine common sensibilities and affinities. What is referred to ever more longingly to- day as Central Europe has in reality always been a crazy quilt of nationalities inhabiting countries wedged between the vastness of Mother Russia and the paternal rigor of Germany. Yet, because many of these countries were for centuries under Aus- trian tutelage, their pe...
In my stepfather's cellar I was waiting for the Russians. I was 20 years old, a deserter, with false military identity papers; if I were to befound out by the National Socialists or by the field gendarmerie, I could be shot or hanged on the spot.
It is easy to wax euphoric over the events that swept Eastern Europe
in 1989. The images-flashed
across television screens or played
upon the pages of newspapers and
magazines-still remain fresh in memory: In Hungary, the funeral and re- burial of Imre Nagy, leader of the 1956 Revolution; in East Germany, the joyous flood of people streaming through the Ber- lin Wall, that symbol of division and Cold War; in Poland, the beaming face of Lech Walesa, his Solidarity trade union relegalized; in...
id-December 1989, poetry buffs
in Poland received a Christmas
present they had long been waiting
for: the first "official" (that is, nei-
ther underground nor emigre)
publication in Polish of the se- lected poems of Russian-American Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky. The fact that the book was just a reprint of an earlier emigre edition could not detract from the readers' satisfaction: Another taboo had been bro- ken, another long-vilified author had made his way into aboveground circulation....
t is not by chance that psychoanaly-
sis was born in Vienna and came of
age there. In Sigmund Freud's
time-that is, in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries-the cultural
atmosphere in Vienna encouraged a fascination with both mental illness and -sexual problems which was unique in the Western world-a fascination that ex-tended throughout society, even into the imperial court which dominated Viennese social life. The origins of this preoccupation can be traced to the history of the city it...
t is difficult to exaggerate the dread
and sense of crisis that the urban
poor inspired in most citizens of
the United States a century ago.
The phenomenally rapid industri-
alization that had been underway since the Civil War was attracting millions of eastern and southern Europeans to America's sweatshops, steel mills, and railyards. The influx of these "more foreign foreigners," more alien in language, cus- toms, and religion than the Irish and Ger- man immigrants who preceded th...
Americans remember the those who recall the 1950s as a time of so- 1950s for many things, but cial stagnation, Cold War belligerence, high among them is the im- and hidden turbulence, Eisenhower has age of Dwight D. Eisen- seemed (like the decade itself) bland, inef- hower, the genial, smiling fectual, mediocre-a man, Arthur Schle- national hero whose reas- singer has written, "who did not always suring presence seemed to symbolize the understand and control what was going halcyon days of...
is name was Orson Squire
Fowler. In his day, it was a
name to be reckoned
with, a name that gar-
nered notice-and in
some cases tributes-from many of his triple-monikered con- temporaries: Julia Ward Howe, Henry Ward Beecher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Edgar Allan Poe, to name a few.
He is largely forgotten now. He was buried just over a century ago in an un- marked grave in the Bronx, and there is no monument to his memory or his varied achievements. But there are ma...
Reviews of new research at public agencies and private institutions
"American Indians: The First of This Land."
Russell Sage Foundation, 112 E. 64th St., New York, N.Y. 10021. 408 pp. $49.95.
Author: C. Matthew Snipp
The 1980 census revealed two landmarks in the history of the North American Indians. For the first time in over two cen- turies, their population ex-ceeded one million. It also re- vealed that American Indians, who just a decade earlier were the poorest group in the...
