Ethnic Clichés

The Deed Defended

From the Couch . . .

Laborites and Reformers

Movies vs. Films

A Rabbi's Dilemma

Depressed Area Aid

Growing Old

New York's Irish

Who is a Jew?

The Warren Commission: An Editorial

As this is being written in early December, the Warren commission, appointed by President Johnson to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy and to "satisfy itself that the truth is known," has just held its first meeting

Five Years of Castro's Cuba

On the fifth anniversary of Fidel Castro's regime, it is clearer than ever before that his crucial problem is and has been economic.

A Matter of Faith

A Memoir.

P.S. 165

P.S. 165 is a New York City elementary school with classes ranging from kindergarten to the sixth grade. The two great themes in the very mixed world of P.S. 165 are brotherhood and community.

Reflections on Trotsky

Any lingering doubts as to the central importance of the French Revolution example for the Bolsheviks are stilled by the perusal of Mr. Isaac Deutscher's massive three-part biography of Trotsky.

Public Affairs: The Coming Test of American Democracy

What is disquieting in our present condition is the contrast between the gravity of the two great domestic problems that require solutions--race relations and unemployment--and the complacency permeating the thoughts and actions of government and public alike.

How Many Israels?

Favoring "one of our own" seems to be more evident than before among the non-Ashkenazim in Israel. By electing the fellow Near Easterner one assures oneself not only the kind of gratification that Italians used to get from Joe Dimaggio here, but also the tangible rewards, and respect, that success in politics normally brings.

Observations: A New Deal for the Arts

The recent closing of the Living Theater in New York for default on rent and taxes reminds us strongly of the plight of such enterprises in our society.

Peretz Off-Broadway

In early November "The Theatre of Peretz," a dramatization of nearly a dozen stories by the classical Yiddish writer, was presented at a small off-Broadway house.

Beyond the Melting Pot, by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan

Glazer and Moynihan have concentrated on the "internal" history of each of their groups--the Irish, Italian, Jewish, Negro, and Puerto Rican--in order to chart the complex emergence of this "new social form."

Poetry: A Closer Look, by James M. Reid, John Ciardi, and Laurence Perrine

"Poetry: A Closer Look" is such a "superior product."

The Conditions of Human Growth, by Jane Pearce and Saul Newton

Peace and Newton have something important to say to anyone interested in how people become or fail to become as human as they can.

The Promised End, by Stanley Edgar Hyman

Arendt on Eichmann

In Hazard

Visions of History

Symposium

Buber's Hasidism

Bruce's Comedy

Praise

Pius XII, the Jews, and the German Catholic Church

This month, the New York production of Rolf Hochhuth's play "Der Stellvertreter" is scheduled to open under the title "The Deputy." Because it sharply criticizes Pope Pius XII for never having issued a public protest against the Nazi assault on the Jews, the play has already touched off a heated discussion in Europe. Guenter Lewy deals not with "The Deputy" itself, but rather with the questions Hochhuth has raised.

Two Stories

Two stories.

The Meaning of Negro Strategy

In May of 1963, the world was abruptly made aware that a new minority community had emerged as a significant and self-conscious force in American society. The evidence was clear, eloquent, and disturbing.

The New Statesman & the English Left

The "New Statesman" recently marked its fiftieth birthday, and here in London the happy event has been duly and decorously celebrated.

Soviet Economic Developments

This is the second in a series of three articles by Oscar Gass dealing with the changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union under the rule of Nikita Khrushchev.

New York Politics & the Liberal Party

Why is it that the Liberal party of New York has survived to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, when the several Labor parties, the Progressive party, the Commonwealth party, and the Socialist party--to name only those recently singled out by Ben-Davidson--have all gone into eclipse?

Remembering Jewish History

Although Jews are always much concerned with "history"-in the sense that traditionally they expect much of it--very few Jews, in my experience, know very much about their own history even in modern times.

Free Will (Again)

It is not just the terms of the free-will controversy that are, or have become, problematical. The very meaning, or point, of the doctrine of "determinism" seems increasingly unclear.

The Presidential Papers, by Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer's "Presidential Papers" is a collection of much of his occasional writing of the last few years. This book, like so many of its author's public performances, will not fail to outrage.

Invisible Latin America, by Samuel Shapiro

I see a grim period ahead, in which all good Americans, God save us, are going to have to worry about Latin America as we were once taught to worry about the starving children of China. There are people who sincerely believe that the southern part of our hemisphere is the key to the world's future.

The State of the Unions, by Paul Jacobs

The Scientific Intellectual, by Lewis S. Feuer

For decades now, but especially since the first Sputniks went into orbit, the slogan, "Science Can Be Fun" has been used by teachers and others of missionary bent to attract the interest of indifferent children.

The Trial of Charles de Gaulle, by Alfred Fabre-Luce; and A Modern French Republic, by Pierre Mendes-France

Both these books--one a political fiction, the other a political blueprint--deal ostensibly with the future.

Challenge to Affluence, by Gunnar Myrdal

Before I start to talk about this wonderful little book--wonderful because it speaks bluntly of fundamental issues--I want to get some things off my chest.

Time of Arrival and Other Essays, by Dan Jacobson

Dan Jacobson has a quality of character which distinguishes his essays.

Germany's Jews Today

Explaining Deviance

Race and Class

U.S. Forgein Policy

New Left Reviewed

Be Fruitful and Multiply

Liberalism & the Negro: A Round-Table Discussion

The present discussion on Liberalism and the Negro was wholly spontaneous, lasted for three hours, and took place before an invited audience which was given an opportunity to participate. What follows is an edited transcript of the entire proceedings.

A Wedding in Brownsville

A story.

Maurice Samuel & Jewish Letters

For more than three decades, Maurice Samuel has been a kind of one-man educational movement in American Jewish life.

The Oswald Affair

If we believe that a man must be considered innocent until he is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, we can already assert that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent. For to the unbiased critical mind, the case against him is a tissue of improbabilities, contradictions, and outright falsifications.

Peace in Our Time?

That the cold war should come to an end is indeed a rational wish shared by the overwhelming majority of people on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The emotions from which such expectations spring are honorable and generous, but they are politically blind, and pernicious if translated into action.

Auteur! Auteur!

As any reader of the film quarterlies will know, while the rest of us have been arguing over such questions as whether or not Antonioni is boring, there has been raging in film circles a full-scale ideological battle which leaves that sort of thing far behind.

Once Upon a Droshky, by Jerome Charyn; and Seven Days of Mourning, by L. S. Simckes

A few years ago, I belonged to an informal circle at the University of Chicago. Most of us were graduate students in English, either active or lapsed, and most of us were also Jewish. In short, what goes by the name just now of "camp."

Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry, by Thomas S. Szasz

The subject of this book is the unfortunate marriage of law and psychiatry in the United States. It recommends that they be divorced immediately.

The Press and Foreign Policy, by Bernard C. Cohen; and National Leadership and Foreign Policy, by James N. Rosenau

Journalists, like everybody else, tend to be happiest when they are comfortably swaddled in myths. Among their favorites is the myth that the press is a neutral conveyor belt which serves the democratic process.

The Religious Press in America, by Martin E. Marty & Others

The four essays that make up this book were written by a Lutheran minister, a Roman Catholic layman, a Conservative rabbi, and a Barnard College professor of economics, Robert Lekachman, who appears here in the role of kindly outsider.

The Education of American Teachers, by James Bryant Conant

It is mainly through the guidance of James Bryant Conant that middle America has been coming to terms with current educational predicaments.

Praise

The Faith Defended

Schools or Prisons?

Teaching Anti-Communism

Race & Economics

Peretz Performed

The Revolt Against Ideology

Can it any longer be doubted that, on all sides of the Iron Curtain, the age of Leviathan is upon us? And for serious men does there remain any significant form of activity that is politically indifferent?

These Are the Times: On Being A Southern Liberal

I've been an integrationist (if you want a label) as long as I have had social ideas, but in Texas in the 40's and 50's I was not called on to practice my ideas much, you understand. Growing up in San Antonio, I had no awareness of Negroes.

Intermarriage & the Jewish Future

American Jews have always had a reputation for resisting intermarriage, and they still serve as a model in this respect for other ethnic and religious groups who worry about their future in a pluralist society.

Stirrings in West Germany

It is easy enough to find something plausible to say about Western Germany; what is hard is to say something convincing.

Isaac Bound

A story.

Looking for Genet

Jean Genet wrote "Our Lady of the Flowers" in the middle of World War II, and just about the time when Hitler was at his most triumphant.

Letter from Formosa

There are encounters in which a fleeting gesture, a smile, or a momentary blankness of expression can suddenly assume for the observer a symbolic intensity which is far more revealing than the occasion seems to justify. Thus I cannot forget the picture of General Chiang Kai-shek at a naval maneuver some time ago in Kaohsiung.

The Tradition of McClure

The mass magazine has a bad name in this country, as a vulgarizing and corrupting influence on American letters. It goes against all our current prejudices to admire any medium dedicated to reaching a large, undistinguished public.

The Meaning of Jewish History, by Jacob Bernard Agus

The Hebrew Patriarchs discovered the one true God by their own disinterested virtue and thus founded a rudimentary Jewish religion. That was the version of Jewish history that I learned as a child.

Utopia & Its Enemies, by George Kateb

Although world-wide change is wiping the slate clean for us, we seem paralyzed and incapable of imagining an attractive future. Utopias differ from other conceptions of an ideal society in that their relation to earthly life, to history, is indeterminate.

The Will, by Harvey Swados

No one, reading Harvey Swados's latest novel, is likely to cry out, "Wild, man!" Sick wisdom, strange-loving burlesque, comic nihilism, hellerish fantasy, high-spirited nausea, so'thern jokes--these elements of recent fiction, taken in some quarters to be the last word in literary rebellion, are not to be found in "The Will."

One-Dimensional Man, by Herbert Marcuse

Professor Marcuse's new work is a considerable contribution to our already extensive literature on the alienation of Western man.

Memoirs of a Revolutionary: 1901-1941, by Victor Serge

Victor Serge spent his whole adult life at that crossroads of literature and revolution--in France, Spain, Germany, Russia, and Mexico--where so large a part of the intellectual consciousness of our century has been formed.

Cuba's Economy

Public vs. Private School

Of Banality and Romanticism

Religion in Israel

The Warren Commission

Ethnic Distinctions

Trotsky

Vietnam-Resistance or Withdrawal?

To resist or to withdraw: these are the alternatives. And they are alternatives which can be variously structured.

Jewish Writing in England

Not very long ago I was invited to appear on a Brains Trust at a Jewish function in London. One of the main problems facing the Anglo-Jewish writer today is the Anglo-Jewish audience.

Up from Apathy-The Woodlawn Experiment

In recent years a growing number of liberals--reflecting the wistful American notion that with enough money any problem can be solved--have been pushing for a federal "crash program" to remove the disabilities and deprivations that bar Negroes from full participation in American society. What has gone wrong?

The Illusionless Man & the Visionary Maid

A story.

Senator Fulbright's New Foreign Policy

Senator William Fulbright. of Arkansas is among the ablest and most responsible members of the Senate.

Catacombs & Khazars

Cyprus is in the news and His Beatitude Makarios III is in the news pictures, with his archiepiscopal vestments and beard, and yet the one thing that people do not seem to talk about when they talk about him is that he is an archbishop.

The Strangely Polite

The most memorable comic elements in Stanley Kubrick's brilliant and impudent new movie, "Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," are an assortment of visual gags.

The Nerve of Gunter Grass

Gunter Grass is an industry: 300,000 copies of "The Tin Drum" sold in Germany; more than 60,000 in France; the American edition passed 90,000 in hardcover, well over 100,000 in paperback. But it is not Grass's enormous success that matters most. It is the power of that bawling voice to drown the siren-song of smooth oblivion, to make the Germans face up to their monstrous past.

Jefferson and Civil Liberties, by Leonard W. Levy

A recent skirmish in the "New York Review," featuring hard words and hard feelings, is good evidence that Mr. Levy's book has already begun to carry out its function, which is to force a review of Thomas Jefferson as chief apostle of civil liberty.

Jacob Epstein, Sculptor, by Richard Buckle

Nothing serves a gifted, ambitious artist working within the received conventions of his time quite so well as a reputation for being scandalous and "advanced."

Mark the Glove Boy, by Mark Harris

Mark Harris, under the auspices of "Life" magazine, has entered the field of personal journalism, a form whose recent incarnation we owe to Norman Mailer and James Baldwin.

Peace Agitator, by Nat Hentoff

A. J. Muste--Abraham Johannes--the well-known pacifist, has been an active American radical for over fifty years. If one reads between the lines of "Peace Agitator, it is clear that the pacifist's turn to revolutionary politics exacted a practical and psychic cost he had never anticipated.

Du Ghetto a L'Occident [

There are now some 225 sociological studies of American Jewry, and they form only one part of an increasingly vast literature that deals with American immigrant groups.

Reflections on Modern History, by Hans Kohn

The title of this book is promising. Modern history, that nightmare from which we are trying to awaken, certainly calls for reflection.

Pius XII and the Jews

A Dissent

Poverty and Affluence

Cuban Scoop

The Cold War in Perspective

In three years' time there is going to be a half-centenary. Will we be urged to remember that Wilson and Lenin represent incompatible principles? Or will the political climate permit a cautious move toward ideological rapprochement?

New Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls

Until a very short while ago, the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls seemed destined to remain one of the insoluble mysteries of history--at least so far as a small minority of skeptics was concerned.

Schools, Slums, and Montessori

The scandal of modern education for slum children has lately become a matter of national discussion and worry.

Boris

A story.

Automation and the State

There is little consolation for the factory worker in the expansion of government employment, since he does not possess the requisite transferable skills. To make matters worse, employment is also expected to drop because of technology.

On the Eclipse of God

The ancient belief that the Divine is with us cannot, it is said, be sustained in the face of these catastrophes, for to sustain it requires smugness and blindness to tragedy. Yet the fact is that this view reflects a complete lack of understanding of the nature of religious faith in general and Biblical faith in particular.

Irving Howe-The Socialist Imagination

Over the past decade or so there have seemed to be two Irving Howes. One, of course, is the literary scholar and journalist: the author of the fine critical biography of Sherwood Anderson, the intricate interpretation of Faulkner, the erudite and mostly objective book on "Politics and the Novel."

Letter from Peru

The degradation of the six million Quechua Indians, half of Peru's population, has passed through several stages.

The Mythmakers, by Bernard Nossiter

Bernard Nossiter's fine book exemplifies both the virtues and the limitation of the new mood of liberal economic thought. One of these virtues is realism.

The Rise of Reform Judaism, by W. Gunther Plaut

This valuable collection of source materials is designed to acquaint the reader with the primary forces in the development of Reform Judaism in Europe.

Sprightly Running, by John Wain

When I read this slice of Mr. Wain's autobiography in England a while ago, I was overwhelmed by the quite unexpected way in which my own experience and outlook coincided with his.

The Americans, by Oscar Handlin; and The First New Nation, by Seymour Martin Lipset

Both "The Americans" and "The First New Nation" make implicit use of economic causes while projecting a type of theory which tends to exclude them.

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, by Milton Rokeach

The book opens with a promising epigraph. "Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility." This pleasantry of Bertrand Russell's is obviously used by Dr. Rokeach to refer to the three Ypsilanti madmen each of whom thought he was Christ.

Negro Strategy

New Statesmanship

Liberals and Others

Jewish Alienation

Utopians and Economists

Factories or Temples?

The Cold War

Lee Harvey Oswald

The Dering Case: A Surgeon at Auschwitz

From April 13 until May 6 of this year, the London newspapers reported what must be the strangest libel case ever brought to court, even in a city more inured to libel proceedings than most--"Dering v. Uris and Others."

Man with a Hoe, 1964

A story based upon research Paul Jacobs is doing for a new book on unemployment as a way of life.

Napoleon Street

Much of Saul Bellow's new novel, "Herzog"--which will be published in September by Viking--takes place in the mind of the hero. In the section that follows, Herzog, who grew up in Canada, ruminates about his past while composing one of his imaginary letters to a childhood friend.

Christian Schools & Israeli Children

Before arriving in Israel last January I was aware that there had been a resurgence of controversy over alleged efforts by Christian missionaries to convert Jewish children, but I did not attribute much significance to it. The seriousness of this new development, however, was first borne upon me when I came across a poster displayed in Jerusalem.

Listening to Pedro Martinez

It is small wonder that Mr. Michael Harrington, another and equally gifted witness of poverty, should cite Norman Mailer to the effect that the social scientists are encroaching on the domain of literature. In some respects, this is true.

On Being a Music Critic

As I recall my beginning as a music critic, I read, then I heard, or I heard and then read; in either case I found that what I heard was not described correctly by what I read.

Hutchins of Chicago

Though the public still hears from Robert M. Hutchins as head of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and perennial critic of the higher vocationalism of our colleges and universities, he is perhaps best known for his years at the helm of the University of Chicago.

Two Scenes of English Life

Two short scenes.

Chagall-An Innocent in Paris

The School of Paris, which only yesterday loomed as the unrivaled citadel of modern art, has gradually slipped into history.

The Geography of Intellect, by Nathaniel Weyl and Stefan Possony

Indeed, what is most impressive about this book is the quantity of its miscellaneous irrelevance.

Golda Meir: Woman With a Cause, by Marie Syrkin

Golda Meir's life story is intrinsically exciting, quite apart from its special Jewish interest.

The Wasted Americans, by Edgar May

Americans have often been described as impulsive consumers of material goods whose tastes change with frequent regularity. Much the same can be said about the growing group of Americans who consume social problems.

The Wapshot Scandal, by John Cheever

In the latest Wapshot novel the chief character is the 20th century, and now everything but Cheever's prose has deteriorated and grown corrupt.

Man and His Government, by Carl Joachim Friedrich; and Human Nature and Politics, by James C. Davies

When I was just coming to the end of being a little boy, my mother warned me of "mutton dressed as lamb." Had she known that my main diversions in this painful life were to be scholarly, she might better have warned me of lamb dressed as mutton.

The Making of the English Working Class, by E. P. Thompson

To a generation reared on classical economic history, it was something of a shock to be told a few years ago that the agony of the Industrial Revolution was a myth.

The White Liberal

Jewish Survivalism

By Any Other Name...

Intermarriage

N.B.

The Negro & the Democratic Coalition

Of the key elements in the American electorate, Negroes have consistently been the most loyal of voters.

Rightists, Racists, & Separatists: A White Bloc in the Making?

If 1963 signaled the emergence of the Negro community as a significant force in American society, 1964 may well come to be regarded as the year in which white reaction to the civil rights revolution began to make itself felt on a national scale.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

At a news conference in 1962, John F. Kennedy coined the phrase, "sound public constitutional policy." Mr. Kennedy redeemed his pledge very substantially, making the best civil rights record of any national administration since Reconstruction.

The Yoke of the Torah

A memoir.

Antitrust in America

In America competition was always more than a theory: it was a way of life and a creed. Not surprisingly, the men of the first antitrust generation made frightening projections into the future.

Europe & the United States

In 1945, Europe lay in ruins--I might even say from the Atlantic to the Urals. In 1963, fifteen years after the beginning of the Marshall Plan, the prosperity of Western Europe rivaled that of the United States.

Breakthrough?

American Jewish writers are no longer concerned to prove that "they are spectators no longer but full participants in the cultural life of their country." They take that for granted, and go on to explore aspects of their own past.

Spanish Anti-Semitism Today

The man at the next table was once a notorious Belgian fascist. The magazine he is reading contains a glowing feature on the life and work of Adolf Hitler.

The Great Treasury Raid, by Philip M. Stern; and The Cold War & the Income Tax: A Protest, by Edmund Wilson

We have here two very strenuous efforts at clarification of the federal system of taxation, written by two upper-class purists who have been horrified unto death by their discovery of certain of the qualities of American social reality.

Order of Battle: A Republican's Call to Reason, by Jacob K. Javits

Jacob Javits's Republicanism has confounded his constituents since he first ran for Congress in 1946. Democrats wonder how he can be a Republican, and Republicans wonder whether he really is one.

The Scarperer, by Brendan Behan

Behan's vision of evil was not complex, but it had incisiveness and integrity.

The Morning After: A Study of Independence, by Brian Crozier

Pessimistic thoughts are prompted and confirmed by Mr. Crozier, a widely traveled journalist who works for "The Economist."

Science: The Glorious Entertainment, by Jacques Barzun

A person reading Jacques Barzun's new book might well have misgivings about sending his children to college at all.

Vietnam Background

More on Intermarriage

Family Feud

The Role of Ideology

Anglo-Jewish Writing

The Negro & the New York Schools

Perhaps another generation will decide that it was strategically unwise for the Negroes to have made the schools their first objective in the struggle to achieve full equality. Schools are after all the symbol rather than the source of Negro suffering.

The Trial of Jesus

There may still be people who think, or pretend to think, that no such person as Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. Jesus and his disciples are not mythical characters; they are historical persons. Jesus of Nazareth lived and he died. He died on the cross.

German Diary

A diary from George Lichtheim's recent visit to Germany.

The World of Wilhelm Reich

That he would be ridiculed and persecuted seemed to Wilhelm Reich but one of the high prices he would have to pay for the range and depth of his advance beyond the analytic attitude as it had been developed by Freud.

Is Congress Obsolete?

It is comforting to know that some things never change, or at least not very much. One can still drop into that sprawling chamber where the people's representatives meet in solemn session and wonder how anything of the slightest importance could possibly happen there.

Goldwater-The Romantic Regression

The liberal Republican opposition to Goldwater, and the newspapers and columnists sympathizing with it, have made it appear that Goldwater has imposed an alien conservative philosophy upon an unwilling Republican party which he has been able to dominate. This is a myth.

Rome & Jerusalem

Can it be that some Jews, and even rabbis, really believe that anti-Semitism is a Christian problem--believe it, that is, as something more than a tautology?

Jewish

A story.

The Inner Eye: Selected Essays, Volume II, by Hayim Greenberg, edited by Shlomo Katz

This second volume of Hayim Greenberg's essays in English (three volumes have also appeared in Yiddish), ranges in time from 1922 until 1952, the year before his death, and in subject from problems of Jewish identity and the related question of Zionism to reflections on religion, history, philosophy, and politics.

Racial Crisis in America, by Lewis Killian and Charles Grigg; Race, the History of an Idea in America, by Thomas F. Gossett; and The Negro Church in America, by E. Franklin Frazier

Although the Civil War has always been regarded as the most painful and enduring experience in American history, we are beginning to realize that its effects on the national life have been far less severe than those of the trauma of slavery which led to it.

Political Power: USA/USSR, by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel P. Huntington; and A Strategy of Interdependence, by Vincent P. Rock

As one reads Rock against the background of the Brzezinski-Huntington analysis, it unfortunately becomes clear that his political presumptions are unrealistic.

Bohemian versus Bourgeois, by Cesar Grana

There have not been many general studies of the vast problem of the alienation of the artist from society. Dr. Grana has now come along to take a more cooly academic view, and he relates the whole question to the attitudes of certain French writers of the 19th century.

Cell 772, or Life Among the Extremists

"Anyone who joins us in all sincerity we welcome," Goldwater said in his acceptance speech. "Those, those who do not care for our cause, we don't expect to enter our ranks in any case." There is solace in that, and much hope.

Three Tales

Three tales.

The New Italy & Its Politics

Italian Christian Democracy stands in a special relation to Catholicism for the obvious reason that Italy is the headquarters of the Universal Church whose head is an Italian. Italian Socialism is more socialist than in other European countries in the sense that it has not forgotten its pre-First World War origins.

The Masada Dig

A diary of Daniel Gavron's days at the Masada dig.

On Becoming a Writer

In the beginning writing was far from a serious matter. The act of writing, however, requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

The Jacobs Affair

The fundamentalist tenet that God actually dictated the whole Torah--including the Talmud--verbatim and in its authorized text to Moses on Mount Sinai would seem an unlikely matter over which the passions of contemporary Jews could be inflamed. Yet the prosperous and relatively urbane Jewish community of England was recently split into two warring camps in a dispute over precisely this tenet.

Mortal Statistics

If you go to Sweden to ask questions, as I did a few years ago, you may well find that there is one question that some Swedes will try to get in first: "I suppose it's the suicide rate you've come about?"

Ideology-A Debate

The following exchange was occasioned by Henry David Aiken's article, "The Revolt Against Ideology," which appeared in the April "Commentary."

The Black Jews of Harlem: Negro Nationalism and the Dilemmas of Negro Leadership, by Howard Brotz

It is unfortunate that Howard Brotz decided to give his book so limited a title as "The Black Jews of Harlem." Half of it is indeed about this strange sect--less strange now, to be sure, than when he first studied it ten years ago.

The Cart and the Horse, by Louis Kronenberger

Drama critic, critic of literature generally, and 18th-century scholar, Louis Kronenberger has long been known for a style and attitude reminiscent of the 18th century.

The Conscience of a Conservative and Why Not Victory?, by Barry Goldwater

Senator Goldwater's nomination as Republican Presidential candidate automatically transforms his "The Conscience of a Conservative" from an ideological curiosity into a significant political document.

Anti-Semitism: A Concise World History, by James Parkes

It is a rare thing when the title of a book describes it not only accurately but modestly as well. Dr. Parkes's "concise world history" of anti-Semitism is not merely brief; it demonstrates more may be learned from common sense than from sophisticated techniques.

Politics in a Pluralist Democracy: Studies of Voting in the 1960 Election, by Lucy S. Dawidowicz and Leon J. Goldstein

In "Politics in a Pluralist Democracy," Lucy Dawidowicz and Leon J. Goldstein have written a concise and immensely interesting account of how questions of religion and national origin affected voting for and against Kennedy.

Errata

For the Record

Cold War Controversy

In Defense of Dr. Hayek

Montessori Today

Protest & Rejoinder

Antitrust

Religious Authority & Mysticism

It is sometimes said that mystics, with their personal striving for transcendence, live outside of and above the historical level, that their experience is unrelated to historical experience. Some admire this ahistorical, others condemn it as a fundamental weakness of mysticism.

Legislating in Texas

A provincial legislature is a fertile source for a writer. So many crimes are committed there daily in an atmosphere of a service club social, and the human flaws are so accessible. But the state legislature of Texas itself is something more directly human, irrelevant to ivory tower polemics, and I was simply not prepared for it.

"I'm Sorry, Dear"

The modern dialogue which furnishes me my title is practiced throughout the Western world. As a theme with only a limited number of variations, it cannot sustain much repetition: familiarity breeds silence; although never really abandoned, the script quickly becomes implicit.

Street of the Prophets

A story.

Population Myths

In recent years the rapid growth of world population has come to loom as one of the great problems of the age. Perhaps the most common of all misconceptions concerning the so-called population explosion is that it poses a problem only to the economically underdeveloped, non-Western part of the world.

The Literature of the Holocaust

In the twenty years since the war ended the flood of literature on the Nazi atrocities has never slackened; gradually, however, its style has changed and its direction.

"In New York You Get Swallowed by a Horse"

A story.

Tevye on Broadway

Sholem Aleichem was a genius, Zero Mostel is a genius. Add the two together and the result ought to be extraordinary. But in "Fiddler on the Roof," the result is not at all extraordinary. It is disheartening.

Television & Canadian Culture

Montreal is the best place in the world in which to watch television.

To an Early Grave, by Wallace Markfield

Like a number of recent examples of the urban-picaresque mode, "To an Early Grave" seems less a novel than a theatrical performance.

The Act of Creation, by Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler's immense and splendid work may itself be regarded as a creative act--in terms of his own comprehensive formula.

The Radical Tradition, by R. H. Tawney

R. H. Tawney, who died two years ago, was the last of the great English socialist intellectuals.

The Recurrent Pattern, by Nathan Rotenstreich

Modern though, according to Professor Rotenstreich, has not done justice to Judaism.

Economic Growth and Employment Opportunities for Minorities, by Dale L. Hiestand

Everybody seems to know the general course of 20th-century employment opportunities for Negroes in America. Slow but steady progress into better jobs and higher pay until the 1940's.

The Proper Study of Men

Breakthrough?

The Role of Social Workers

Scholars & Scrolls

Men & Machines

The Crisis of Faith

Negroes and Jews: The New Challenge to Pluralism

If we knew decades ago that the ironic historic confrontation of Jew with Negro in the North had produced hatred on the part of many poor and uneducated Negroes, we now have to record two new developments in this confrontation. First, the well of ill-feeling has moved upward to include a substantial part of the Negro leadership; and second, Jewish feelings toward the Negro has undergone changes of its own.

Is There A Tragic Sense of Life?

We set a particular value on those writers of plays--sometimes of novels--who give expression to what has been called the "tragic sense of life." Do we overvalue them?

The Strange Death of Tory England

A generation ago, in an interesting Book, George Dangerfield told the sad story of what he called "The Strange Death of Liberal England." What is the relevance of this to Britain's recent, and rather unsensational, General Election and change of government?

Converts

A story.

The Strength of Robert Frost

Between 1954 and 1958, first in Northampton, then at Amherst, I saw Robert Frost often in the setting of a New England college town. In his eighties his presence was strong, vivid, gifted, contradictory, and passionate; I was fascinated by his sense of himself.

A Matter of Conscience

Last autumn my wife and I made an early return from a delayed honeymoon trip to Europe in order to register for the national elections, a detail we engaged in on differing levels of seriousness: for she was registering in order to vote, and I was registering the first step in my usual principled position--which was not to vote at all. This election was different, however.

Zangwill in Retrospect

Israel Zangwill was born a hundred years ago this year, but in England his centenary has slipped by with barely a murmur.

Was Lenin Necessary?

It is a hundred years since Communism became a practical aim, and nearly fifty years since the October revolution in Russia claimed to be putting that aim into practice. No one can dispute Lenin's genius as a revolutionary. But revolution is not an end in itself.

Herzog, by Saul Bellow

"Herzog" is a lovely book, so crammed with wit and thoughtfulness and feeling that one can go on reading it over and over.

Reminiscences, by Douglas MacArthur

Most reviewers have treated this as a Them, not an Us book. It is being bought by Them in quantity, to judge from best-seller lists, though We may wonder whether having bought it They are able to get through it.

The Uses of the University, by Clark Kerr

The argument Of Mr. Kerr's book is that the American university is the center of the knowledge industry in this country.

Mississippi: The Closed Society, by James W. Silver; and A Time to Speak, by Charles Morgan, Jr.

A new kind of Southern gentleman has arisen within the last decade or so. He is no longer the region's beau ideal, but rather its renegade.

Worship and Ethics: A Study in Rabbinic Judaism, by Max Kadushin

This book is an attempt to give a new understanding of rabbinic ethics, a field of study which has been sadly neglected by serious scholars.

Congress: The Sapless Branch, by Joseph S. Clark; and The Senate Establishment, by Joseph S. Clark & Others

The word "reform" should be understood as a slogan-much as we have witnessed the word "poverty" becoming a slogan in the past year or so and taking over the role "reform" once played.