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Archive Search Results
Spring 2001: How the World Views America
selected essays
A Hero with a Blind Spot
by Peter Schneider
A View of Rome from the Provinces
by Allister Sparks
After the Thaw
by Yuri Levada
Beauty - and Beast
by Wang Jisi
Mexico's New Spirit
by Sergio Aguayo
Stranger in the Arab-Muslim World
by Fouad Ajami
Denial is at the heart of the relationship between the Arab and Muslim worlds and America.The Barbaric Americans
by Denis Lacorne
The Demon in Jim Garrison
by Max Holland
Did the popular belief that the CIA was involved in the Kennedy assassination grow from a seed planted by the Soviet KGB?The Storm over The Black Book
by Andrzej Paczkowski
A scholarly effort to tally the human cost of communism around the world has stirred enormous controversy. One of its authors explains why.What Does It All Mean?
by Mark Kingwell
Human beings can´t help but ask the big philosophical questions, even if they know that the answers will come up short.The Empire Underground
by David W. Wolfe
Twenty-five years ago, Illinois scientist Carl Woese identified an entirely new form of life. His discovery upended the traditional notion that all living things on Earth fall into five kingdoms and challenged our understanding of evolution and the origin of life. All he had to do was persuade his fellow scientists.
A Hero with a Blind Spot 
by Peter SchneiderA View of Rome from the Provinces
by Allister SparksAfter the Thaw
by Yuri LevadaBeauty - and Beast
by Wang JisiMexico's New Spirit
by Sergio AguayoStranger in the Arab-Muslim World
by Fouad AjamiDenial is at the heart of the relationship between the Arab and Muslim worlds and America.
The Barbaric Americans
by Denis LacorneThe Demon in Jim Garrison
by Max HollandDid the popular belief that the CIA was involved in the Kennedy assassination grow from a seed planted by the Soviet KGB?
The Storm over The Black Book
by Andrzej PaczkowskiA scholarly effort to tally the human cost of communism around the world has stirred enormous controversy. One of its authors explains why.
What Does It All Mean?
by Mark KingwellHuman beings can´t help but ask the big philosophical questions, even if they know that the answers will come up short.
The Empire Underground
by David W. WolfeTwenty-five years ago, Illinois scientist Carl Woese identified an entirely new form of life. His discovery upended the traditional notion that all living things on Earth fall into five kingdoms and challenged our understanding of evolution and the origin of life. All he had to do was persuade his fellow scientists.
in essence
The Morally Perplexed Academy
The Second Coming of Scandal
"What Happened to Sex Scandals? Politics and Peccadilloes, Jefferson to Kennedy" John H. Summers, in The Journal of American History (Dec. 2000), 1215 E. Atwater Ave., Bloomington, Ind. 47401–3703.
At the 1912 Democratic National Convention, which nominated New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson for president, there were whispers about Wilson’s close friendship with a woman not his wife. He worried about possible public scandal, but none occurred. The country by then, writes Summers, a doctor...
Federalism's Phony Rebirth
Trimming the Force
The Missile Defense Divide
Is the New Economy History?
Making Sense of Labor
The First Crash
The Urban Myth
The Next Welfare Reform
'Ordinary' Mass Murderers?
The Giveaway Scoop
Wonk If You Love Policy
A Medieval Sociobiologist
"Thomistic Natural Law as Darwinian Natural Right" Larry Arnhart, in Social Philosophy & Policy (Winter 2001), Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State Univ., Bowling Green, Ohio 43403.
In his controversial works Sociobiology (1975) and Consilience (1998), Edward O. Wilson argued that ethics is rooted in human biology: the deepest intuitions of right and wrong are guided by the brain’s emotional control centers, which evolved through natural selection to help the human...
The Blue-Collar Montaigne
"Eric Hoffer Revisited" Stephen Miller, in The Republic of Letters (2000: No. 9), www.bu.edu/trl.
A self-educated longshoreman who loved Montaigne, Eric Hoffer (1902–83) was already a well-known author when he appeared on national television in 1967. But his one-hour conversation with CBS commentator Eric Severeid made him a star: "the lowbrow’s highbrow," as one friendly reviewer put it. Today, though, Hoffer is little remembered and less read—and that’s a shame, says Miller, author of t...
Is Nanotech Getting Real?
The Reluctant Sectarians
"The Intellectual Appeal of the Reformation" David C. Steinmetz, in Theology Today (Jan. 2001), P.O. Box 29, Princeton, N.J. 08542.
In looking back at the early Protestant Reformation, observes Steinmetz, a professor of the history of Christianity at Duke University Divinity School, it’s easy to overlook an essential truth: its Catholic character. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other early reformers "were not Protestants" in the way that later ones would be. "In the nature of the case, they c...
Tuskegee Redux?
Remaking the Landscape
Matt Cartmill, in The Key Reporter (Autumn 2000), Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1785 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Fourth Floor, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Is consciousness unique to humans, or do other animals also possess it? Scientists-who arc generally reluctant to deal with so subjective a thing as consciousness-are divided on the question. But Cartmill, a professor of biolog- ical anthropology and anatomy at Duke University Medical Center, thinks that the form of unconsciousness known as sleep offers s...
Why Do Horses Sleep?
Matt Cartmill, in The Key Reporter (Autumn 2000), Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1785 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Fourth Floor, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Is consciousness unique to humans, or do other animals also possess it? Scientists-who arc generally reluctant to deal with so subjective a thing as consciousness-are divided on the question. But Cartmill, a professor of biolog- ical anthropology and anatomy at Duke University Medical Center, thinks that the form of unconsciousness known as sleep offers s...
A Misunderstood Masterpiece
their very nature, contain novels; yet novels can contain history' and philosophy. We need not quarrel about which genre is supe- rior; all are essential to huii1an striving. But somehow it is enchanting to think that the magic sack of make-believe, if one wills it so, can always be fuller and fatter than anything the historians and philosophers can supply. Make-believe, with its useless- ness and triviality, with all its falseness, is nevertheless freqz~ei~tl)
praised for telling the truth via...
Ellison and the Wright Stuff
The Ming Voyages
"China, the West, and World History in Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China"
Robert Finlay, in Journal of World History (Fall 2000), Univ. of Hawaii Press,
2840 Kolowalu St., Honolulu, Hawaii 96822.
Thanks to British scholar Joseph Needham’s monumental Science and Civilisation in China (1954–98), westerners have a whole new appreciation of China’s richly inventive past. Especially compelling was his account of 15thcentury Chinese expeditions to Southeast Asia and, through...
Mexico's 'Compassionate Conservatism'
David A. Shirk, in Journal of Democracy (Oct. 2000). 1101 15th St.,N.W., Ste. 802, Washington, D.C. 20005.
Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox, ended decades of rule the Institutional Revolutionary Party (I'RI) when he took office last December. The country is enter- ing a new era-and many fear that Fox's National Action Party (PAN) is, at bottom, a reactionary party. It isn't, contends political scientist Shirk, a former visiting fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, at the University o...
The Morally Perplexed Academy
The Second Coming of Scandal
"What Happened to Sex Scandals? Politics and Peccadilloes, Jefferson to Kennedy" John H. Summers, in The Journal of American History (Dec. 2000), 1215 E. Atwater Ave., Bloomington, Ind. 47401–3703.
At the 1912 Democratic National Convention, which nominated New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson for president, there were whispers about Wilson’s close friendship with a woman not his wife. He worried about possible public scandal, but none occurred. The country by then, writes Summers, a doctor...
Federalism's Phony Rebirth
Trimming the Force
The Missile Defense Divide
Is the New Economy History?
Making Sense of Labor
The First Crash
The Urban Myth
The Next Welfare Reform
'Ordinary' Mass Murderers?
The Giveaway Scoop
Wonk If You Love Policy
A Medieval Sociobiologist
"Thomistic Natural Law as Darwinian Natural Right" Larry Arnhart, in Social Philosophy & Policy (Winter 2001), Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State Univ., Bowling Green, Ohio 43403.
In his controversial works Sociobiology (1975) and Consilience (1998), Edward O. Wilson argued that ethics is rooted in human biology: the deepest intuitions of right and wrong are guided by the brain’s emotional control centers, which evolved through natural selection to help the human...
The Blue-Collar Montaigne
"Eric Hoffer Revisited" Stephen Miller, in The Republic of Letters (2000: No. 9), www.bu.edu/trl.
A self-educated longshoreman who loved Montaigne, Eric Hoffer (1902–83) was already a well-known author when he appeared on national television in 1967. But his one-hour conversation with CBS commentator Eric Severeid made him a star: "the lowbrow’s highbrow," as one friendly reviewer put it. Today, though, Hoffer is little remembered and less read—and that’s a shame, says Miller, author of t...
Is Nanotech Getting Real?
The Reluctant Sectarians
"The Intellectual Appeal of the Reformation" David C. Steinmetz, in Theology Today (Jan. 2001), P.O. Box 29, Princeton, N.J. 08542.
In looking back at the early Protestant Reformation, observes Steinmetz, a professor of the history of Christianity at Duke University Divinity School, it’s easy to overlook an essential truth: its Catholic character. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other early reformers "were not Protestants" in the way that later ones would be. "In the nature of the case, they c...
Tuskegee Redux?
Remaking the Landscape
Matt Cartmill, in The Key Reporter (Autumn 2000), Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1785 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Fourth Floor, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Is consciousness unique to humans, or do other animals also possess it? Scientists-who arc generally reluctant to deal with so subjective a thing as consciousness-are divided on the question. But Cartmill, a professor of biolog- ical anthropology and anatomy at Duke University Medical Center, thinks that the form of unconsciousness known as sleep offers s...
Why Do Horses Sleep?
Matt Cartmill, in The Key Reporter (Autumn 2000), Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1785 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Fourth Floor, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Is consciousness unique to humans, or do other animals also possess it? Scientists-who arc generally reluctant to deal with so subjective a thing as consciousness-are divided on the question. But Cartmill, a professor of biolog- ical anthropology and anatomy at Duke University Medical Center, thinks that the form of unconsciousness known as sleep offers s...
A Misunderstood Masterpiece
their very nature, contain novels; yet novels can contain history' and philosophy. We need not quarrel about which genre is supe- rior; all are essential to huii1an striving. But somehow it is enchanting to think that the magic sack of make-believe, if one wills it so, can always be fuller and fatter than anything the historians and philosophers can supply. Make-believe, with its useless- ness and triviality, with all its falseness, is nevertheless freqz~ei~tl)
praised for telling the truth via...
Ellison and the Wright Stuff
The Ming Voyages
"China, the West, and World History in Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China"
Robert Finlay, in Journal of World History (Fall 2000), Univ. of Hawaii Press,
2840 Kolowalu St., Honolulu, Hawaii 96822.
Thanks to British scholar Joseph Needham’s monumental Science and Civilisation in China (1954–98), westerners have a whole new appreciation of China’s richly inventive past. Especially compelling was his account of 15thcentury Chinese expeditions to Southeast Asia and, through...
Mexico's 'Compassionate Conservatism'
David A. Shirk, in Journal of Democracy (Oct. 2000). 1101 15th St.,N.W., Ste. 802, Washington, D.C. 20005.
Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox, ended decades of rule the Institutional Revolutionary Party (I'RI) when he took office last December. The country is enter- ing a new era-and many fear that Fox's National Action Party (PAN) is, at bottom, a reactionary party. It isn't, contends political scientist Shirk, a former visiting fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, at the University o...
book reviews
The Confederacy's Marble Man
by Max Byrd
Requiem for a Dream
by David J. Garrow
Name That Tune
by James Morris
What good is a song Or they grow to Wliitmanescpe width: If the words just don't belong? And list'nin to some big out-a-town jasper ay Livingston and Ray Evans didn't get hearin' him tell about horse race gamblin' around to asking that question in a song (Meredith Willson) "To Each His Own") until 1946, but the sentiment was hardly new then, and it hasn't Or they find distinctive cadences in be- aged a day since. The common wisdom is that tween: words and music are inseparable, a...CARSON McCULLERS: A Life
by Michael Malone
. By Josyane Savigneau; transl. by Joan E. Howard. Houghton Mifflin. 370 pp. $30 I once heard Eudora Welty quote some advice Willa Cather had given her: "Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet." It is advice southern writers have traditionally taken to heart, creating from their regional postage stamps of America our nation’s literary landscape. On that fictional map is a small, hot, dreary Georgia mill town where during the Great Depression a girl named Lula Carson Smith (k...THE VIRGIN OF BENNINGTON
by A. J. Hewat
Current Books fought to hold onto hers. Despite shyness, ill- ness, and at times suicidal depression, she committed herself to her public presence as a writer. International literary festivals and writers' retreats such as Breciclloaf and Yadclo were second homes. Wherever she went, she was greatly beloved-and greatly disliked. Gore \Tidal once said, "An hour with a den-tist without Novacaiiie was like a minute with Carson McCullers." Undiagnosed rheumatic fever lcd to a series of s...BERTRAND RUSSELL: The Ghost of Madness, 1921- 1920
by MARK KINGWELL
MYTHS IN STONE: Religious Dimensions of Washington, D.C.
by AMY SCHWARTZ
Current Rooks and his activism led to another stay in prison, this time with his fourth wife, Edith, for a week in 1961, Retired to North Wales, he continued writing ;ind arguing while try- ing without success to patch up the many rends in his life's fabric, including estrange- ments from his ex-wives, children, and granclcliilclren. Monk is severely critical. His condemna- tion rests substantially on a judgment of Russell's journalism, which, he believes, exem- plifies tlie philosopher's s...THE WOMAN I WAS NOT BORN TO BE: A Transsexual Journey
by Amy Bloom
TheLincoln Memorial ings, religious or otherwise, is an important pitched battles over the messages conveyed by of the capital's life. This book makes clear statues, museums, and memorials. that ours is not the first generation to fight -AMY SCHWAR'IY CONTEMPORARY FFAIRS THE WOMAN I WAS NOT 13OAW 7'0BE: A IranssexuaI ~ourtze~/. By Aleshia ~revarcl.lemple Univ. I'ress. 260 pp. S24.95 This is the story of a small-town kid, grow- ing up ill the narrow-minded but not delib- erately unkind...TROUBLEMAKER: The Life and History of A.J.P. Taylor
by MARTIN WALKER
Current Books TRUE TALES FROM ANOTHER MEXICO: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx. BySam Quinones. Univ. of New Mexico Press. 336 pp. $29.95 "l'oor Mexico," lamented the dictator Porfirio Di'az, "so far from God ancl so close to the United States." Echoing Porfirio, most Americans writing on Mexico portray it as a pitiable place, impoverished, corrupt, and hopeless. And so this beautifully written collection of essays is a wonder and a delight. Quinones, a...TRUE TALES FROM ANOTHER MEXICO: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx
by C. M. Mayo
Current Books TRUE TALES FROM ANOTHER MEXICO: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx. BySam Quinones. Univ. of New Mexico Press. 336 pp. $29.95 "l'oor Mexico," lamented the dictator Porfirio Di'az, "so far from God ancl so close to the United States." Echoing Porfirio, most Americans writing on Mexico portray it as a pitiable place, impoverished, corrupt, and hopeless. And so this beautifully written collection of essays is a wonder and a delight. Quinones, a...DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
by Michael Novak
COMRADES AT ODDS: The United States and India, 1947-1964
by ROBERT M. HATHAWAY
COSMIC EVOL UTION: The Rise of Complexity in Nature
by Charles Seife
WHEN INFORMATION CAME OF AGE: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700- 1850
by EDWARD TENNER
of information, the 18th ancl early 19th centuries had no strong themes of their own. Before them came the fer- ment of the printing revolution and elite lit- eracy; after them, the rise of mass coin- is what Headrick does here: he deems the years 1700-1850 a period of exceptional innovation, featuring a "cultural revolu- tion in information systems" that prepared the way for developments ranging from the punch card to the World Wide Web. When Information Came ofAge provides a respectful...
The Confederacy's Marble Man
by Max ByrdRequiem for a Dream
by David J. GarrowName That Tune
by James MorrisWhat good is a song Or they grow to Wliitmanescpe width: If the words just don't belong? And list'nin to some big out-a-town jasper ay Livingston and Ray Evans didn't get hearin' him tell about horse race gamblin' around to asking that question in a song (Meredith Willson) "To Each His Own") until 1946, but the sentiment was hardly new then, and it hasn't Or they find distinctive cadences in be- aged a day since. The common wisdom is that tween: words and music are inseparable, a...
CARSON McCULLERS: A Life
by Michael Malone. By Josyane Savigneau; transl. by Joan E. Howard. Houghton Mifflin. 370 pp. $30 I once heard Eudora Welty quote some advice Willa Cather had given her: "Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet." It is advice southern writers have traditionally taken to heart, creating from their regional postage stamps of America our nation’s literary landscape. On that fictional map is a small, hot, dreary Georgia mill town where during the Great Depression a girl named Lula Carson Smith (k...
THE VIRGIN OF BENNINGTON
by A. J. HewatCurrent Books fought to hold onto hers. Despite shyness, ill- ness, and at times suicidal depression, she committed herself to her public presence as a writer. International literary festivals and writers' retreats such as Breciclloaf and Yadclo were second homes. Wherever she went, she was greatly beloved-and greatly disliked. Gore \Tidal once said, "An hour with a den-tist without Novacaiiie was like a minute with Carson McCullers." Undiagnosed rheumatic fever lcd to a series of s...
BERTRAND RUSSELL: The Ghost of Madness, 1921- 1920
by MARK KINGWELLMYTHS IN STONE: Religious Dimensions of Washington, D.C.
by AMY SCHWARTZCurrent Rooks and his activism led to another stay in prison, this time with his fourth wife, Edith, for a week in 1961, Retired to North Wales, he continued writing ;ind arguing while try- ing without success to patch up the many rends in his life's fabric, including estrange- ments from his ex-wives, children, and granclcliilclren. Monk is severely critical. His condemna- tion rests substantially on a judgment of Russell's journalism, which, he believes, exem- plifies tlie philosopher's s...
THE WOMAN I WAS NOT BORN TO BE: A Transsexual Journey
by Amy BloomTheLincoln Memorial ings, religious or otherwise, is an important pitched battles over the messages conveyed by of the capital's life. This book makes clear statues, museums, and memorials. that ours is not the first generation to fight -AMY SCHWAR'IY CONTEMPORARY FFAIRS THE WOMAN I WAS NOT 13OAW 7'0BE: A IranssexuaI ~ourtze~/. By Aleshia ~revarcl.lemple Univ. I'ress. 260 pp. S24.95 This is the story of a small-town kid, grow- ing up ill the narrow-minded but not delib- erately unkind...
TROUBLEMAKER: The Life and History of A.J.P. Taylor
by MARTIN WALKERCurrent Books TRUE TALES FROM ANOTHER MEXICO: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx. BySam Quinones. Univ. of New Mexico Press. 336 pp. $29.95 "l'oor Mexico," lamented the dictator Porfirio Di'az, "so far from God ancl so close to the United States." Echoing Porfirio, most Americans writing on Mexico portray it as a pitiable place, impoverished, corrupt, and hopeless. And so this beautifully written collection of essays is a wonder and a delight. Quinones, a...
TRUE TALES FROM ANOTHER MEXICO: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx
by C. M. MayoCurrent Books TRUE TALES FROM ANOTHER MEXICO: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx. BySam Quinones. Univ. of New Mexico Press. 336 pp. $29.95 "l'oor Mexico," lamented the dictator Porfirio Di'az, "so far from God ancl so close to the United States." Echoing Porfirio, most Americans writing on Mexico portray it as a pitiable place, impoverished, corrupt, and hopeless. And so this beautifully written collection of essays is a wonder and a delight. Quinones, a...
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
by Michael NovakCOMRADES AT ODDS: The United States and India, 1947-1964
by ROBERT M. HATHAWAYCOSMIC EVOL UTION: The Rise of Complexity in Nature
by Charles SeifeWHEN INFORMATION CAME OF AGE: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700- 1850
by EDWARD TENNERof information, the 18th ancl early 19th centuries had no strong themes of their own. Before them came the fer- ment of the printing revolution and elite lit- eracy; after them, the rise of mass coin- is what Headrick does here: he deems the years 1700-1850 a period of exceptional innovation, featuring a "cultural revolu- tion in information systems" that prepared the way for developments ranging from the punch card to the World Wide Web. When Information Came ofAge provides a respectful...