Post-Bourgeois Europe

Insofar as Western Europe is beginning to resemble the United States--in respect to income levels, social fluidity, and the breakdown of inherited class and caste structures--its society begins to reproduce some of the patterns of a modern industrial democracy with which Americans are familiar.

The Housing Order & Its Limits

On November 20, 1962--as the entire nation listened to hear the outcome of two events, either of which might have touched off a world war--President Kennedy read a prepared statement announcing that he had signed an Executive Order banning discrimination in federally aided housing.

Jewish & Other Nationalisms

The Jews have been a European nation responding to the same general forces which have moved the other European nations. One of these forces has been that great ideological impulse which burst the old framework of Europe in the 19th-century: nationalism.

Growing Old in America

It is quite impossible to look without fear upon the simple malice that can play in the face of a white-haired old woman--who is probably herself as a mother and a grandmother--as she watches an infant struggling to take his first steps. Where does such malice come from? What can it mean?

After the Cuban Crisis

Whether the United States moves directly against him or not, Castro's days in power may indeed be numbered.

The Innocence of Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams is not our best, but our only American playwright since O'Neill. His imagination magnetized though it is by the outlandish and the outre, is a kind of fever chart of our national ailments.

So I'm Not Lady Chatterley, So Better I Should Know It Now A Story

A story.

Israel's Three Cities

The meeting point of Haifa is the observation platform in the middle of Panorama Road. It is always crowded. Tel Aviv is a specifically Israeli growth. In itself Jerusalem is quite dull.

The New Secretary-General

The United Nations Charter describes the Secretary-General as "the chief administrative officer of the organization."

Festivals and Judges

The last decorations will surely have been taken down from the lampposts by Lincoln's birthday, so the end of the Christmas season is in sight. The Jews of America are completing another cycle of ease and unease--in November, Thanksgiving; in December, Christmas.

“Playboy” and its Readers

American Radicalism

Praise

Sources of Nazism

Analyzing Fagin

The School Prayer Decision

Bar Hiya

Reik's Jokes

Social Criticism

Literary Criticism

The Warfare State, by Fred J. Cook

This fellow really believes the cold war was begun, and still continues, because of a conspiracy of the American military-industrial complex: such is the entire impression the reader will take away with him from this devious potpourri of a book.

The Ghetto Game, by Dennis Clark; and A Tale of Ten Cities, edited by Eugene J. Lipman and Albert Vorspan

In "The Ghetto Game," Dennis Clark joins James Conant and Michael Harrington to warn that all is far from well in "the other America."

The Soviet Revolution, 1917-1939, by Raphael R. Abramovich

Raphael Abramovich is the last great representative of the forgotten alternative to the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution: the true Marxists, democratic Socialists, of the Menshevik party.

The Story of Jewish Philosophy, by Joseph Blau; and The Jewish Mind, by Gerald Abrahams

It is encouraging that serious scholars, who do not specialize in Jewish studies, should turn their attention to Jewish thought.

Naked Lunch, by William Burroughs

Well, "Naked Lunch" is no work of genius but the first half of it is pleasantly readable without too much skipping, and the second half of it is pleasantly skippable without too much yawning.

My Negro Problem-And Ours

For a long time I was puzzled to think that Jews were supposed to be rich when the only Jews I knew were poor, and that Negroes were supposed to be persecuted when it was the Negroes who were doing the only persecuting I knew about--and doing it, moreover, to me.

The Predicament of the Jewish Musician

In the last hundred and fifty years--that is, beginning with the emancipation of the Jew in Western Europe--Jews have risen to a remarkable prominence in the world of music; today one might say they virtually dominate it.

“Good Bunnies Always Obey”: Books for American Children

Ever since an 18th-century bookseller named John Newbery commissioned Oliver Goldsmith to compile the first Mother Goose, and thus launched an industry, the publication of books for children has been, among other things, a way of making money.

On Being a Candidate

I find it difficult to believe that only three months ago I was a candidate for major office. Here is a paradox worth pondering. Why did I do it?

Taibele and Hurmizah A Story

A story.

Little England

A generation ago, not even the most rabid of Briton-baiters would have called the British an introspective people. The Cuban crisis has brought one thing home to the British very forcibly: Britannia rules the waves no more.

Responses and Reactions II

This is the second in a bi-monthly series of personal commentaries by Norman Mailer on selections from Martin Buber's two-volume collection, "Tales of the Hasidim."

The Idealism of Milovan Djilas

In the period shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the Communist underground in Yugoslavia was shaken by a fierce literary and intellectual conflict. Milovan Djilas, an intransigent Stalinist intellectual, was involved.

The Modern Rabbi

We moderns looking back can see that the ancient rabbinate did far more than hold the key to decisions in doubtful cases. They in fact adjusted more than one Biblical statute to the changing conditions of life, and to men's increasing moral sensitivity.

Raymond Chandler, Private Eye

In reading "Raymond Chandler Speaking," a collection of the late mystery writer's letters and literary fragments, one gets a sense of the peculiar loneliness of the writer of integrity who works in a popular genre that attracts few writers like himself and that the American literary culture tends to dismiss with easy, contemptuous generalizations.

On “Letting Go”

Pierce Reconsidered

Opus Dei

Covenant Theology

Rationalism in Politics, by Michael Oakeshott

Neo-conservatism is not as influential in the present decade as it was in the 1950's, when the postwar reaction against all forms of radicalism was in full swing. A defensive tone has once more crept into it.

Abraham Geiger and Liberal Judaism, edited by Max Wiener

Jewish modernity as a continuous tradition is more than two hundred years old. For the most part, Jews have been occupied with all the possible permutations of the answer to one ultimate question: how can the Jew, as Jew, cease being two and become one?

World Without Want, by Paul G. Hoffman; and Economic Development in Perspective, by John Kenneth Galbraith

Hoffman and Galbraith, writing in the flush of the American spirit of the mid-1900's, cannot see the mountainous fact of social revolution looming over their landscape of economic development.

The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings, by Peter H. Rossi and Robert A. Dentler

A major problem facing any central agency in charge of a plan for urban renewal is to make certain that the plan will, finally, answer not only to the broad community interest but also to the needs and desires of the individuals who live in the area.

People and Life 1891-1921, by Ilya Ehrenburg

If Ilya Ehrenburg were a conformist pure and simple, his autobiography could be expected to amount to little more than an apology for his own life. Ehrenburg has tried for considerably more.

The Crisis in the Western Alliance

Two short essays on the crisis of the Atlantic Alliance. Hans Morgenthau espouses an American view while Graham Hutton maintains a British view.

My Father's Son

The present essay has been adapted from Mark Harris's introduction to his new play, "Friedman and Son."

The Polish Miracle

When measured in terms of economic statistics, the revival of the Polish countryside which I witnessed last summer may not rank with the revival of West German capitalism under Erhard. But it is certainly a political miracle that Gomulka should have felt able to achieve this revival.

Faigele the Idiotke A Story

A story.

Epistles from the Eisenhower Age

The Eisenhower administration on the whole was not a bad administration so far as its policies and achievements were concerned: very little that was undertaken by the government of the United States might have been better had we in 1952 placed our destinies in anyone else's hands.

New Left Marxism

Some time ago a speaker on the BBC expressed the hope that Jean-Paul Sartre would in future devote more of his time to drama and less to philosophy. Similar observations are made occasionally in France by people whose political commitments do not differ much from those of Sartre, but who are skeptical of his claim to have effected a synthesis of Marxism and Existentialism.

People Get Hooked

The American "narcotics problem" is an artificial tragedy with real victims. One such victim was "Janet Clark," the pseudonym of a young heroin addict whose tape-recorded confessions were published in a volume titled "The Fantastic Lodge."

On “Ship of Fools”

Bazelon, Pro and Con

Jewish Resistance

China & the U.S.

Bay State Politics

Talscott Parsons, Calvinist

The Paradoxes of Freedom, by Sidney Hook

The three interrelated chapters of this book elaborate a series of lectures which the author delivered at the University of California. They all address themselves to some currently much debated issues in constitutional law.

Coat upon a Stick, by Norman Fruchter

At a point in time when the East Side ghetto has faded in the consciousness of most younger American Jews to a blurred recollection from their parents' childhood, it seems just a little improbable that an American Jewish writer should take as the subject for his first novel the aged sexton of a dying synagogue on the East Side.

Report of the Committee on Broadcasting, by Sir Harry Pilkington & others

The Pilkington report is a long and repetitive amalgam of Fabian tract, aristocratic bias, puritanical concern, New Left polemic, and technical jargon produced by a committee of private citizens who had been authorized to observe and ponder the condition and influence of British broadcasting.

The National Wealth of the United States in the Postwar Period, by Raymond W. Goldsmith

Society and statistics grow together, the one in size and the other in importance. This is one of the larger meanings of living in a mass technological society.

The Early Goebbels Diaries 1925-1926, edited by Helmut Heiber

To readers of history, these diaries of Goebbels will prove disappointing. There is little new historical information to be gained from them.

Church, State, and the Jews

"The time has come," editorialized the magazine "America," "for Jews to decide precisely what they conceive to be the final objective of the Jewish community in the United States." Many Jews were offended by the questions, but it is nevertheless a fair one and deserves an honest answer.

The Tax Trimmers

Like last year's Trade Expansion Act, President Kennedy's only consequential legislative proposal for 1962, the new tax bill, is a long, intricately detailed affair which--as is usually the case with tax measures--promises to be a lawyer's delight and a layman's labyrinth.

Edward Albee: Red Herrings & White Whales

The much celebrated one- and two-act talent of Edward Albee has at last come to Broadway-sized fruition and is packing them in at the Billy Rose Theater. It is a considerable talent.

Reilly and I

Like most American Jews of my generation, I haven't had much experience with anti-Semitism. All of which is to say that I came into the following situation with little preparation and considerable confusion.

Scientists in the Classroom

Work in reforming the teaching of the sciences has been going on for seven years.

In Acknowledgment of a Chief Rabbi

A story.

India's Crisis: A Diary

A diary of John Mander's visit to India.

Responses and Reactions III

This is the third in a bi-monthly series of personal commentaries by the distinguished novelist Norman Mailer on selections from Martin Buber's two-volume collection, "Tales of the Hasidim."

“My Negro Problem”—I

Hatred and Germany

Against the American Grain, by Dwight Macdonald

For years now Dwight Macdonald has been firing off his gay and spirited salvos against the barbarians in our midst, and it would be ungrateful not to acknowledge a cumulative sense of indebtedness to him. It comes then as a disappointment to find that his essays on mass culture do not stand up on a second reading.

The Natural and the Supernatural Jew, by Arthur A. Cohen

In this book, Arthur Cohen asks that Judaism and the Jewish people be restored to their historic role as God's witnesses on earth.

Main Currents in Modern Economics, by Ben B. Seligman

Of all the social sciences, economics has suffered most from the incompatibility of 18th-century conceptions and 20th-century mathematical techniques.

Here to Stay: Studies in Human Tenacity, by John Hersey

When, in his introduction, John Hersey calls this a collection of "journalistic pieces," he is claiming both too little and too much.

Some Recent Jewish Books

Some of these were first published sixty or seventy years ago, and some only a few years ago. Their republication in this form makes it possible for private and especially institutional libraries to acquire many excellent books that would otherwise be expensive and hard to come by.

Disarmament & the Economy

Imagine the enormity of the economic problem we would face if disarmament were suddenly to emerge as a possibility.

Our Last Days in the Warsaw Ghetto

In commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which has just been celebrated throughout the world, we here present a memoir of the uprising written by a participant who survived the liquidation of the Ghetto, Alexander Donat.

Coming of Age on the Carob Plantation

Margaret Mead's specialty is interfering with her characters in such a way as also to interfere with the reader's understanding of them.

The Demise of NATO

Today NATO is floundering in a permanent state of crisis, for the two conditions on which it was built--American invulnerability and European weakness--have virtually disappeared.

Herbert H. Lehman of New York

To anyone growing up in New York City in the 1930's, the trinity of LaGuardia, Lehman, and Roosevelt seemed as fixed and permanent as the city streets. Lehman's career is awe-inspiring in its length.

A Commentary Report: The First Electrocution

The controversy over capital punishment that has developed in recent years generally takes place within a framework of moral principles and statistics. Perhaps the most pertinent and revealing chapter in the history of capital punishment in America is provided by the events that led up to our first legal electrocution.

On Trying to be Just

To do justice and to receive it is an elemental aspiration of man. It is as elemental as the aspiration to live on after death, to be free from the power of other men, to exert power over man and nature, to love and to be loved.

Some Attitudes Toward Jews

The Jews are a nuisance to Mr. Khrushchev, and he must wish that he could wake one morning and find that they had disappeared--though not by emigration, of course.

“My Negro Problem”—II

Cuba and Peace

TV, Pro and Anti

Cold War Thinking

Growing Old

The New Europe, by George Lichtheim

Regarding this New Europe, Mr. George Lichtheim has written a long, and I believe excellent, political tract.

The Community of Scholars, by Paul Goodman

It is Paul Goodman's awareness of the reality of the educational problem as seen by students like these that makes his ideas for the reform of colleges so important a contribution to contemporary writing about education.

Faith and Prejudice, by Bernhard E. Olson

Not until the publication of Bernhard E. Olson's "Faith and Prejudice" have we had a study that is careful, slow-to-wrath, and slow to generalize.

At the Brink of a Test Ban

It is now eighteen years since the first atomic bomb was exploded in the desert of New Mexico, and for nearly a third of that time three nations--the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union--have been negotiating at Geneva on a treaty to ban the testing of nuclear weapons. Today, both sides have finally arrived at an agreement.

Salinger: How to Love Without Love

Since I loved in outermost Paris during practically the whole of the 1950's, I was very late in learning of what seems to have been one of the chief American diversions during that decade: J. D. Salinger's Glass family.

France's Algerian Jews

It has been estimated that after the Liberation there were between 150,000 and 165,000 persons of Jewish origin living in France; at present, there are between 450,000 and half a million Jews. The most recent and biggest influx thus far has been the politically stimulated mass exodus of Jews from Algeria.

Reapportionment & Liberal Myths

In the decade since Earl Warren became Chief Justice of the United States, the Court over which he presides has embarked on three major enterprises of social reform--a number higher than the historical average for comparable periods, to say the least.

An Ideology of School Withdrawal

Compulsory school attendance in the United States has been justified from the beginning as essential to democratic polity. So far as I know, public support of education in this country has never been justified on the grounds that education was beneficial to the individual student.

The Survivor A Story

A story.

The Politics of Conservative Realism

When a writer of Hans J. Morgenthau's standing assembles three stout volumes of essays, published over the past quarter century, he places the reviewer before a dilemma: some attempt must be made to come to terms with the author's central thesis. The dilemma can be eluded only with the aid of a utopian idealism in this case.

Responses and Reactions IV

This is the fourth in a series of commentaries by the distinguished novelist Norman Mailer on selections from Martin Buber's "Tales of the Hasidim."

Doctors, Lawyers & Other TV Heroes

Television drama lately has developed a new kind of hero, the professional man.

“My Negro Problem”—III

U Thant Reexamined

Tennessee Williams

Cuba & the U.S.

Clarification

Economic Currents

The Jewish Musician—I

The Prophets, by Abraham J. Heschel

The Hebrew prophets were born into a world of desperate power politics, and their message was, to put it quite simply, that power politics don't matter.

The Deadlock of Democracy, by James MacGregor Burns

James MacGregor Burns, the genial professor of political science at Williams College, has a deceptively bland way of advancing revolutionary readings of the past and revolutionary proposals for the future.

Puzzles and Epiphanies, by Frank Kermode

At a time when the labels "provincial," "academic," and "working-class" are worn in English intellectual circles, as a sort of boy-scout proficiency badge, Frank Kermode declares his allegiance to all three states without suggesting for a moment that they are enough in themselves to justify.

The Urban Villagers, by Herbert J. Gans

In these times of suburban growth and urban planning, it is worth being reminded that cities, besides being centers of commerce and culture, are places where people like to live.

Reason and Conduct, by Henry David Aiken

Anglo-American philosophers in the 20th century--despite the fact that to many people outside the field of philosophy their work has seemed to center on preoccupations very far away from what could be traditionally recognized as genuine moral problems--have invested an enormous amount of intelligence in the field called "ethics."

The Ordeal of Power, by Emmet J. Hughes

This little book is of no interest for what it says about Eisenhower and his administration or for what it adds to the common knowledge of recent American politics.

A Commentary Report: The Puerto Ricans

If someone twenty-five years ago had looked around at the potential sources of new immigration to New York City, his eye might well have fallen on Puerto Rico, but he would probably also have concluded that the Puerto Ricans, if they came to New York, would have a very hard time adapting.

A Dissent on Brother Daniel

In December, 1962, the Supreme Court of Israel rejected the claim of Brother Daniel, a Polish Jew who had become a Carmelite monk, that he was entitled to be admitted to Israel under the Law of Return. The decision of the court has brought into sharp focus certain questions of Jewish identity.

The Obsolescent Unions

American unionism, thirty years after the New Deal, is in the grip of two contradictory developments.

On Second Avenue A Story

A story.

Catholic Novels & American Culture

Some fifteen years ago Harry Sylvester, writing in the "Atlantic Monthly" on the problems of the Catholic writer, began with the assertion that there were no living American Catholics who were major writers. An important reason for beginning with Mr. Sylvester's essay is that it accepted a view of the Catholic writer that is still common.

Nuclear Abolitionism

By now all discussion about the Problem of how to avert a nuclear catastrophe has been pretty clearly polarized into two opposite positions--usually known as deterrence and disarmament, but more fairly and accurately characterized by the terms "stabilization" and "abolition."

The Study of Man: Future-mindedness

The English philosopher R. G. Collingwood's autobiographical account of his development provides a convincing demonstration of how good it would be if every professional thinker wrote his intellectual autobiography as a normal part of his life's work: especially if he is English or American.

The Fading Movie Star

The strange evolution of movies in the last ten years--with the remaining studios ever more desperate, ever more coordinated--has brought about the disappearance of something that reviewers and film theorists have never seemed to miss: those tiny, mysterious interactions between the actor and the scene.

A Thousand Pages of Research

Every time I walked along Upper Broadway, I saw them. Old men and old women, in their seventies, like me, seated side by side on the park benches set up by a benevolent city on the traffic islands dissecting the main roadway.

The “Return” of Europe's Jews

One of the most puzzling recent developments on the European literary scene has been the growing popularity, in Central and Western Europe, of books on specifically Jewish themes.

The Jewish Musician—II

De Gaulle and Humanity

Private Eyes

Norman Mailer's Hasidism

Defense of A Lady

Faith and Marriage

The Politics of Hope, by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

This collection of essays, written in the 1950's and early 1960's for a variety of magazines, reflects the amazing catholicity of Mr. Schlesinger's tastes and interests.

In Search of France, by Stanley Hoffman & others

Before summarizing the general thesis of this book, with which it is impossible to disagree, I may as well clear away those incidental points about which I have doubts.

The Making of Economic Society, by Robert L. Heilbroner; and The Great Ascent, by Robert L. Heilbroner

The first of Mr. Heilbroner's two new books is "an attempt to present some of the basic content of economics in [the] mingled light of theory and history." This is a most commendable undertaking. The second book is really an expanded version of the last two chapters of the first.

The USSR & the Future, edited by Leonard Schapiro; and Polycentrism, edited by Walter Z. Laqueur and Leopold Labedz

Generations of philosophers have underscored the old wisdom that just as one can never step twice into the same river, so in the flux of history there is nothing constant save the constancy of change. It should come as no surprise to observe signs of change even within that leviathan known as the Communist bloc.

The Colonial Reckoning, by Margery Perham; and Africa for Beginners, by Melvin J. Lasky

Nobody could have predicted ten years ago the almost indecent rapidity with which the greater part of colonial Africa has been unscrambled.

The Deed, by Gerold Frank

A book dealing with terrorism and political assassination for the sake of the establishment of the State of Israel raises certain expectations, even when, as is the case with "The Deed," it does not necessarily treat of the most important example of such acts.

A Commentary Report: The Irish of New York

The Irish era can be said to have begun with the fall of Boss Tweed in the 1870's, but the groundwork of Irish dominance was set long before that.

A Mission to Israel

A diary from Herbert Weiner's stay in Israel.

Fortress America

Challenged by European demands for nuclear equality, the United States has replied indignantly that a European deterrent would be economically wasteful and strategically dangerous.

To Be A God

Reflections of a psychoanalyst.

Bernard Berenson of Butremanz

In 1888 the "Harvard Monthly" published a short story by Bernard Berenson, a recent graduate of the University. The motifs and mood of the story prefigure in a striking and somber way some of the concerns that obsessed Berenson throughout his life, and of which he was not always consciously aware.

John Bull and John Profumo

With Mr. Macmillan still in office and the case of Dr. Ward still sub judice, the Profumo crisis has yet to run its course. But whatever the eventual outcome, one thing at least is already certain: the affair has made a notable contribution to the Public Happiness.

Nasser's Decade

Gamal Abdul Nasser has now held absolute power in Egypt for over a decade. During that time his regime has settled into a regular and recognizable--if not altogether stable--pattern.

On Paul Goodman

I have only once had the privilege of meeting Paul Goodman. I stress "privilege." There is no one whose encounter flatters in a more exacting way.

Responses and Reactions V

This is the fifth in a series of commentaries by the distinguished novelist Norman Mailer on selections from Martin Buber's "Tales of the Hasidim."

Suburban Anti-Semitisim

Books for Children

Portrait of an Addict

Today's Rabbis

Presidential Faith

The Podhoretz Papers

Ben Emunah li-Khefirah [“Between Faith and Heresy”], by Ephraim Shemuell

Mr. Shemueli's account of the 17th-century controversy between Leon da Modena and Uriel da Costa constitutes the major part of what is a fascinating and important study in faith and heresy--a subject that has gone quite out of fashion in our era of "dogma-less" Judaism.

Past Eve and Adam's, by Thomas F. Curley; and An Answer from Limbo, by Brian Moore

The writer is trapped in a mirror and the result is that his erstwhile quarry is never quite captured. Thomas Curley and Brian Moore both aspire to shatter the mirror, though by different means.

The Conservative Enemy, by C. A. R. Crosland

C. A. R. Crosland, a former Oxford Fellow in Economics and a member of Parliament, has long been associated with the Right wing of the Labor party, and his earlier book, "The Future of Socialism," is generally regarded as the most sophisticated presentation of its case. The essays collected in the present volume bring his earlier arguments up to date.

Stand Up, Friend, with Me, by Edward Field; and Final Solutions, by Frederick Seidel

Edward Field's first book, "the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1963," appears when the author is thirty-nine; it is a thoroughly achieved job of work. My memory is erratic, but I can't recall another debut like that of Frederick Seidel in which a poet of solid gifts appeared so completely clothed in the mind.

In the Fiery Continent, by Tom Hopkinson; and Into Exile, by Ronald Segal

These two in their different ways fought the black man's fight as best they could; neither pretends to be anything but a white man.

Test-Ban Inspections

Jews, Church & State

Dewey vs. Science

Cost of Disarmament

Faith & Prejudice

Hannah Arendt on Eichmann:
A Study in the Perversity of Brilliance

One of the many ironies surrounding Hannah Arendt's book on the Eichmann trial is involved in the fact that it should have been serialized in the "New Yorker" so short a time after the appearance in the same magazine of James Baldwin's essay on the Black Muslims.

In Hazard

I would just as soon forget about Hazard, Kentucky, a desire I share with a number of its unemployed residents, the large U.S. coal companies, the United Mine Workers of America, and the Federal Government. The effect of automation on the coal industry is not the only burden that has come to rest on the weary, stripped hills of Hazard.

Interpreting Hasidism

In the October 1961 issue of "Commentary," Gershom Scholem, commonly regarded as the leading authority on Jewish mysticism, criticized Martin Buber's interpretation of Hasidism. Early this year, Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer criticized Buber on somewhat the same grounds. The following essay was written by Martin Buber in response to these two critics.

The Good Society

It used to be--it seems to have been so even yesterday--that people with a reforming bent of mind knew, or thought they knew, what they meant by the "good society."

A Choice of Profession

A Story.

The Children of Birmingham

In the almost excessive reporting and other coverage of the recent events in the South, there has been amazingly little mention of the momentous success of non-violence as a political means. How and why is it working?

Justice Black and the Absolute

Hugo Black has never convinced the Court on his tactical point about corporations. But he has apparently established his major point, that due process has nothing to do with state regulation of business.

In The Community: The Vanishing Jews

Some years ago a book called The Vanishing Irish worried about the future of Ireland, but since then the Irish have stopped vanishing. The Jews have not stopped.

Strength to Love, by Martin Luther King Jr.; The Negro Leadership Class, by Daniel C. Thompson; The New World of Negro Americans, by Harold R. Isaacs; and Lawd Today, by Richard Wright

Alongside the mass marches, the Freedom Walks, the continuing heroism of voter registration in the rural Deep South, a new radicalism is taking form among the young second-level leadership of the integration movement.

Jews, God, and History, by Max I. Dimont

Dimont's book is not history. It is not even historic myth-making.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter

Written with all the learning, wit, and sophistication that one has learnt to expect from Professor Hofstadter, this book brings together a mass of illuminating information about an aspect of American development which historians have not hitherto examined in any detail.

V., by Thomas Pynchon

"V." is a first novel by an obviously talented young writer. It is an ambitious work and asks to be taken seriously, so it would be well to get to its claims to seriousness at once.

The Miseducation of American Teachers, by James D. Koerner

Dr. Koerner's book is the latest, and quite possibly the best, in a long series of attacks on us educationists and our imputed control of the apparatus of American public education that began with Canon Bernard Iddings Bell's "Crisis in Education" in 1949.

The Dropouts

Warsaw Ghetto

Albee vs. Chester

Goldman Defended

Jews & Unitarians

Algerian Exodus

America & the World Revolution

Last spring, COMMENTARY invited Lewis A. Coser, Oscar Gass, Hans J. Morgenthau, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to participate in a three-hour round-table discussion of America's role in the underdeveloped world.