Thought & Action

Sex & the Soviet Girl

Standards of Living

The Spanish Tragedy

For the Record

The Arab Refugees: A Zionist View

If there is anything which can be said to trouble Americans sympathetic to Israel, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, it is the problem of the Arab refugees. Though it is obvious that the Arab refugees are being used by the Arab states as pawns in a political game, such exploitation does not necessarily invalidate claims put forward on their behalf.

“The Flamboyant Mr. Powell&rdquo

"Beware," Adam Clayton Powell once wrote, "of Greeks bearing gifts, colored men looking for loans, and whites who understand the Negro."* He might well have excepted from this caution whites who understand Adam Powell. Besides, no one understands Powell better than Powell.

Forbidden Foods

In the Bible, the word kasher (kosher) appears in reference to acts properly performed or deemed fitting, but it is never used in relation to food.

Luther

A story.

Vacuum Diplomacy

This spring it will be twenty years since Winston Churchill, in his Fulton address of March 12, 1946, officially inaugurated the Cold War between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union. Today there is no such thing as an Anglo-American alliance.

Lincoln Center: Act II

By now, even to those whose passion for the drama encompasses no more than an annual theater party, critical gossip has intimated that the second stage in the launching of the Lincoln Center Repertory Company was as unpropitious as the first.

Camping in the Wasteland

Since the birth of network television, autumn has been open season for the exercise of critical wit.

The Golem of Prague & The Golem of Rehovoth

When, a year ago, Gershom Scholem, the foremost authority of our day on Jewish mysticism, heard that the Weizmann Institute at Rehovoth in Israel had completed the building of a new computer, he told Dr. Chaim Perkeris that, in his opinion, the most appropriate name for it would be "Golem, No. 1." What follows are Professor Scholem's dedicatory remarks on why the computer should be so named.

In Praise of Guimaraes Rosa

Serious criticism of Latin American writers is still in its infancy in the United States. A tragic case in point is "Grande Sertao: Veredas," the great novel by the Brazilian Joao Guimaraes Rosa.

Invitation to an Inquest, by Walter & Miriam Schneir

"United States v. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg" wasn't the Dreyfus, the Mooney, the Sacco-Vanzetti case of the early 1950's. But much has been written as if it were. Walter and Miriam Schneir's addition to the literature is an earnest, industrious, long, artless, tedious, and finally intemperate book.

Testimony, by Charles Reznikoff

It would be interesting to inquire why the classification of a man as a "Negro" writer or of Faulkner as a "Southern" writer or of Frost as a "New England" poet has not been felt to be disparaging. Is the answer any different for a Jewish writer? Not, I think, if the question were put to Charles Reznikoff.

Our Depleted Society, by Seymour Melman

As his previous writings document, Seymour Melman is no partisan of the military path to prosperity.

Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown

Claude Brown's story of growing up in Harlem deals at great length with juvenile crime, the life in the streets, poverty, the curtailment of schooling, changes in the attitudes of Negroes toward themselves and toward whites, the role of Black Muslims among the poor, and so forth.

The Accidental Century, by Michael Harrington

This is a book of great ambitiousness. That it is only a qualified success can hardly be surprising.

Thought & Action (cont'd.)

Science-Fiction Films

The Police

Because the police play a crucial role in our society, every safeguard should be taken to see that their discretionary powers are used for the enhancement of law and not its debasement.

The Criminal State and German Responsibility: A Dialogue

The German weekly "Der Spiegel" published a conversation between Karl Jaspers and Rudolf Augstein on the issues involved in extending the statute of limitations on Nazi murders. What follows is an abridged version of that conversation.

The Will to Learn

The single most characteristic thing about human beings is that they learn. Learning is so deeply ingrained in man that it is almost involuntary, and thoughtful students of human behavior have even speculated that our specialization as a species is a specialization for learning.

Incident in Jerusalem

The interior of the Hotel Petra, in the Old City section of Jerusalem, had the look of a deserted penny arcade. Above the door was an arch made of alternate red, green, and clear glass panels in the fan-like arrangement that used to decorate the fronts of old nickelodeons.

The French Literary Scene

The Fifth Republic, i.e. the personal rule of General de Gaulle, has now lasted seven years, and while it has entailed little in the way of overt, totalitarian repression, one cannot help feeling that a certain blankness has descended over French literature, as over the political and intellectual life of this country.

Britain Under Socialism

Since October 1964, Britain has been ruled by a Labour government--in high doctrine socialist. But, during these fifteen months, this socialism has proven more conservative, in relation to the established fabric of British society, than the government of Lyndon Johnson in relation to the different American inheritance.

The Trefa Banquet

On Wednesday evening, July 11, 1883, some two hundred persons gathered for dinner at the Cincinnati Highland House, a hilltop resort and restaurant overlooking the Ohio river and the Kentucky hills. In American Jewish history it has become known as the "trefa banquet," an important link in a chain of events that was finally to lead to a break between Reform and Conservative Judaism.

On Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell, who died last autumn in what seems clearly to have been a tragic accident, was in many ways the wonder and terror of American poetry during the late 40's and early 50's.

The Trial of Jack Ruby, by John Kaplan and Jon R. Waltz

Though the publishers claim on the jacket that this intelligent report "will entertain and inform lawyers and laymen alike," it is hard to believe that "The Trial of Jack Ruby" can find many readers.

Rediscovering Judaism: Reflections on a New Theology. Edited by Arnold Jacob Wolf

Nine contemporary Jewish thinkers are represented in this collection of essays--each seeking in his own way the meaning and relevance of some particular aspect of Judaism.

Morning and Noon, by Dean Acheson

Mr. Acheson's delightful memoir--the first volume of his autobiography--is a paradigm of his historic role.

Freedom Summer, by Sally Belfrage; Letters from Mississippi, by Elizabeth Sutherland

In "Freedom Summer," Sally Belfrage tells of being put in jail with a number of other white Northern girls after a demonstration in Greenwood, Mississippi.

The Vanguard Artist: Portrait and Self-Portrait, by Bernard Rosenberg and Norris Fliegel

The announced of the authors is to draw a "composite portrait" of "the artist."

The New Biology

Texts & Translations

Thought & Action (cont'd.)

The Hebrew Language

In the Courts

Therapy & Ethics

A Dissent

The Watts

The riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles last August continued for six days, during which 34 persons were killed, 1,032 were injured, and some 3,952 were arrested. Governor Edward P. Brown created a commission of prominent local citizens, headed by John A. McCone, to investigate the causes of the riots. The McCone Report is a bold departure from the standard government paper on social problems.

Modes and Mutations: Quick Comments on the Modern American Novel

Writing is not an act to excite tolerance. Maybe there has been nothing more catastrophic to America than the failure of its novelists, maybe we are the last liberators in the land, and if we continue to thrive on much less than our best, then the being of all of us may be deadened before we are done.

Martin Buber and the Jews

It was a source of considerable anguish land frustration to Martin Buber that he was more appreciated by Christians than by Jews. How did it come about that the most influential Jewish philosopher of our time has nevertheless been largely rejected by his own people?

Lindsay, Quill, & the Transit Strike

On November 3, 1965, the day after New York's mayoralty election, Mayor elect John V. Lindsay received a telegram, one among many, of "sincere congratulations" from the late Michael J. Quill. November later ended with Lindsay and Quill trading verbal blows.

A Note on Felix Frankfurter

If Felix Frankfurter turns out ultimately to have failed of greatness, it will be probably because he respected power in others and tried to refuse it for the Court on which he sat.

Confronting the Holocaust: Three Israeli Novels

I am not completely sure whether Israeli fiction of the 60's is getting significantly better, but it has clearly gone beyond the beginning stages.

The Best of Broadway

John Osborne's "Inadmissible Evidence" is a brilliant collection of notes for a play.

The Other Singer

There are two Singers in Yiddish literature and while both are very good, they sing in different keys.

Belsen Remembered

"It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting," Koheleth advised, but for all his worldliness he did not anticipate that one could go to both simultaneously. The occasion was last November when the World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Associations sponsored a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria to mark the 20th anniversary of Belsen's liberation.

Beyond Culture, by Lionel Trilling

With "The Liberal Imagination" Lionel Trilling established himself as one of the two or three most important literary critics in the United States.

The City is the Frontier, by Charles Abrams

In 1960 the Ford Foundation made grants of $25,000 each to ten authorities on housing and planning, in order to induce them to set down their thoughts on urban renewal. "The City is the Frontier" is Charles Abrams' report.

On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, by Gershom G. Scholem

After "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism" (1941), the selections from the "Zohar," and "Jewish Gnosticism," "Merkabah Mysticism," and "Talmudic Tradition" (1960), this translation of Professor Scholem's essays on the rituals and symbolism of the Kabbalah is most timely.

The Opinionmakers, by William L. Rivers

The Washington correspondents of major American newspapers are, by and large, better educated and more competent than their foreign colleagues in capitals abroad. As Mr. Rivers observes, they also are often better trained than the officials about whom they write.

The Bolsheviks, by Adam Ulam; Russia and History's Turning Point, by Alexander Kerensky; The Mind and Face of Bolshevism, by Rene Fuloep-Miller

"Lenin is more alive than all those living now," read a huge government placard I spotted in the center of a Soviet city. Western students of the Soviet scene should not be put off by this cult, for the simple reason that Lenin's importance was indeed very great.

Ethics and Therapy

Covering the Jews

Power and Morality

The Dominican Crisis

The Future of Capitalism

For roughly the last century and a half the dominant system of economic organization in most of the West has been that of capitalism. In all likelihood, barring the advent of a catastrophic war, capitalism will continue as the dominant system of the Western world during the remainder of this century and well into the next.

The Jew as American Writer

There is real madness to modern governments, modern war, modern moneymaking, advertising, science, and entertainment; this madness has been translated b many Jewish writers into the country they live in, the time that offers them everything but hope.

Mutual Aid and the Negro

The idea of self-help or mutual aid as a means to further progress in securing full equality is not, to put it mildly, popular among Negroes.

Chinese Visions & American Policies

Washington is, of course, aware of Peking's hopes for the future; one is tempted to add, only too well aware.

Pax Russo-Americana?

It remains as true today as it was three months ago that "the basic force for order in the focal areas of instability in the world today must be the further development of the emergent Pax Russo-Americana."

Going to Shul

Not even the devout necessarily frequent the synagogue every day, contenting themselves with private prayer, particularly on weekdays.

The U.S. Economy-1966

The beginning of the understanding of the American economy during 1966 lies in the clear perception that nothing fundamental in this economy is made what it is by the war in Vietnam.

Double Feature

Sir Laurence Olivier is a masterful actor, maybe even a great one. He does Othello with a rumbling basso and a rolling slouch and a trick of the nether lip. But for most of the way that is as far as he gets with Othello.

TV Chronicle

When the lavish tedium of this season's regular television schedules began to be apparent, optimists among the critics advised us to count on network specials for most of our "viewing pleasure" during 1965-66. Now that the season is approaching its close, perhaps we can consider whether this was good advice.

The Life of Dylan Thomas, by Constantine FitzGibbon

The choice of an Anglo-American writer to write what must surely be the "official' biography of this Welsh poet is a fortunate one.

Belief and Unbelief, by Michael Novak

As a world social movement Catholicism has undergone profound changes in recent years. These tendencies find expression in the remarkable book, "Belief and Unbelief" by Michael Novak.

The Better Half: The Emancipation of the American Woman, by Andrew Sinclair

Andrew Sinclair's book is another attempt to write the history of the American woman--a subject that has the same fascination for social historians that "the great American novel" used to have for writers.

Politics and the Warren Court, by Alexander M. Bickel

For all of the current attacks on the Supreme Court, no sensible critic would argue with the view that our Constitution and courts are basically sound. This issue runs through "Politics and the Warren Court."

The Dominican Crisis (Cont'd.)

Urban Renewal: 2 Views

Kashruth & Reform

Containing China: A Round-Table Discussion

Last February, "Commentary" asked Bernard B. Fall, Richard N. Goodwin, George McGovern, and John P. Roche to participate in a three-hour round-table discussion centering on the question of whether the purpose of American policy in the Far East is to contain Chinese expansion or to halt the spread of Communism. What follows is an edited transcript of the proceedings.

Young in the Thirties

In the 1950's it was established beyond question that the 1930's had not simply passed into history but had become history. A survivor of the actual thirties took what comfort he could from the thought that there can be no history without myth, that fictions about the past are always being contrived by generous youth.

Art, Politics, & the Soviet Writer

The recent convictions of the Russian writers, Andrei Sinyavsky (alias Abram Tertz) and Yuli Daniel (alias Nikolai Arzhak) to seven and five years imprisonment respectively for the crime of sending abroad "anti-Soviet" works constitute only the latest of a number of such scandals which have rocked the Soviet Union since Stalin's death.

Crouch

A story.

The Automation Report

As a public document, the Report of the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress possesses rare virtue.

Film Chronicle

"To Die in Madrid" runs for about eighty minutes. When it is not being arty or wilfully blind, which is about half the time, it is a very decent movie, the only one I've seen in a long time that I wished were longer than it was.

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is a cross between a detective story and a crime documentary. It cannot be considered in any meaningful sense a novel, though it invites criticism as a novel by pretending somehow to be one and by using the machinery of fiction.

The Book of God and Man: A Study of the Book of Job, by Robert Gordis

"The Book of Job" continues to fascinate and challenge scholars. Last year, we had Marvin Pope's translation and commentary on the Anchor Bible, and now we have Robert Gordis, the distinguished Jewish authority on Hebrew Wisdom literature, presenting a study, a commentary, and a translation.

The Great Comic-Book Heroes Compiled, Introduced and Annotated by Jules Feiffer

Between 1945 and 1950, I read quite a few comic books to our then-unlettered son. My own feeling was that as long as I read children's books of my own choice to my child, I ought also to read a few that he picked off the stands. I have not changed my mind about such reflections after looking at James Feiffer's enjoyable sampling from the comic-book major-leaguers of that period.

The Proud Tower, A Portrait of the World Before the War: 1890-1914, by Barbara W. Tuchman

Some reviewers, including several professors of history, have spoken so warmly of Mrs. Tuchman's book that, after reading it through once, I have been turning over the pages and sampling it again to see if I can find anything in it that is not merely what the French would call haute vulgarisation.

The Bit Between My Teeth, by Edmund Wilson; and Edmund Wilson, by Sherman Paul

Professor Sherman Paul's assessment of Edmund Wilson's career, subtitled "A Study of Literary Vocation in Our Time," is a conscientious and thoughtful piece of work which will probably be found most useful for its presentation of Wilson's social and intellectual background.

Israel & the Arabs

The Rosenberg Case

For the Record

The Use of Hebrew

Overlooked Promise

Limits of Objectivity

Police & Public

An Agenda for American Liberals

These, without doubt, are the years of the liberal. Almost everyone now so describes himself. But this is also a good time for reflection on liberal goals. In both domestic and foreign policy, we are by way of completing a chapter.

The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy: A Case Study in Collective Psychopathology

Exterminatory anti-Semitism appears where Jews are imagined as a collective embodiment of evil, a conspiratorial body dedicated to the task of ruining and then dominating the rest of mankind. This kind of anti-Semitism can exist almost regardless of the real situation of Jews in society.

Science and the Common Reader

Looking back, one can see now that the third week of October 1945 was a major turning point. This was the week that the Association of Los Alamos Scientists issued its first public statement that three scientists testified before Congress on a science foundation bill and that Leo Szilard and others testified before the House Military Affairs Committee on the postwar future of atomic energy.

The Murder of Rabbi Adler

According to his teachers at the University of Michigan, where he majored in political science, Richard Wishnetsky was a brilliant young man. Rabbi Adler was familiar with Richard's problems, however, and had been trying to draw him away from the abyss that threatened to engulf him.

Kennedy as Statesman

The dream of the political outsider is to know why men of state are doing what they do. So it is with enormous expectations that one opens the pages of the two recent books on John F. Kennedy by Theodore Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

The Apocalyptic Temper

The kind of relevance of cultural past to cultural present was brought home to me with particular force by R. W. B. Lewis's recent essay on an apocalyptic mode of American fiction, "Days of Wrath and Laughter."

The Literature of American Government

Henry Michel addressed his great book, "The Idea of the State," to "... sincere minds...who search to see clearly in their ideas on some matters that are difficult and moving." One rightly looks for no other addressees.

Musgrave's Dance and Azdak's Circle

John Arden is considered by many close to the theater to be England's best contemporary playwright. Consequently, his best known work, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, had to wait some seven years after its debut at the Royal Court Theater in London for a New York production.

“The Communist Rabbi”: Moses Hess

Moses Hess is an anomaly. A founding father of revolutionary socialism in Germany, he is best remembered today as the first "secular Zionist."

Against Interpretation, by Susan Sontag

The chief commodity of Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation," according to its own author and her reviewers, is a modern sensibility.

At the Dawn of Civilization: A Background of Biblical History, edited by E. A. Speiser

This is the first volume of a projected "all-inclusive" and "authoritative history of the Jewish people from its beginning to the present time."

Unsafe at Any Speed, by Ralph Nader; and Safety Last, by Jeffrey O'Connell and Arthur Myers

Perhaps the most far-reaching consequence of the mass media, and the one of which we have yet to see the end, is their trivialization of all human experience. What is the true horror of the trivializers? These two books disclose its dimensions.

The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski

Jerzy Kosinski's brilliant and horrifying book belongs to an increasingly numerous genre of semi-autobiographical fictions by writers who were children during the war.

Modern Capitalism: The Changing Balance of Public and Private Power, by Andrew Shonfield

Andrew Shonfield has taken a long, close look at postwar capitalism in the developed West and concluded that it has achieved a dazzling success.

Economic Prognosis

Critic Defended

Fiscal Differences

Kashruth

Memories

A Judge's Personality

The Nature of Law

Policing the Police (Concl'd)

Church and State: How High a Wall?

A country with separation of church and state is democratic, tolerant, open, free; a country without separation is despotic, persecuting, closed, unfree. "Religious freedom," in the words of the canon, "is most secure where church and state are separated, and least secure where church and state are united."

The Problem of the New Left

What more is there to say, at this date, about the New Left? It has already received extensive coverage in the mass media; it has emerged as an identifiable entity in the mind of Washington. Yet most liberals come away from encounters with the New Left feeling profoundly ambivalent.

Three Stories For Children

Three short stories.

The View From Europe

First, what of Europe? And what of Britain's chance of gate-crashing its way into the club? Why the current disintegration of NATO?

Is There a Jewish Art?

Is there a Jewish art? First they build a Jewish Museum, then they ask, Is there a Jewish art? Jews! As to the question itself, there is a Gentile answer and a Jewish answer.

Pop Music on Camera

Along with other dyspeptic observers, I have been predicting the decline of American popular music for over twenty-five years. Not without reason.

When Reform Was Young

As the founder of American Reform Judaism and all its institutions--the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Hebrew Union College, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis--Isaac Mayer Wise has been apotheosized in a prodigious number of works. The latest addition to the writings on Wise is James Heller's voluminous book.

The Achievement of Noah Greenberg

Noah Greenberg died suddenly this January of a heart attack at the age of forty-six. In my experience, everyone who knew him liked him: he was short on malice, and he stood in no one's way.

Standards: A Chronicle of Books for Our Time, by Stanley Edgar Hyman

Stanley Hyman has here brought together a selection of fifty-four of the reviews he has written in recent years for the "New Leader," and in them he ranges learnedly over a very wide area of contemporary literature, anthropology, mythology, and biblical translation.

The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South, by Eugene D. Genovese

Eugene Genovese's "The Political Economy of Slavery" is an effort to put the argument back on the track and to reconsider the problem of meaningful connections between fundamental economic forces and the coming of the Civil War.

Notebooks, 1942-1951, by Albert Camus

The literary interest and philosophical importance of this, the second volume of Camus's notebooks, are bound up with the period covered.

Jews in America: A Short History, by Ruth Gay

This book is one of a series of octavo-sized volumes of less than two-hundred pages on various topics in the humanities and social sciences; it is addressed to young adults and other readers. It is marked by a guarded yet unmistakable optimism.

Toward a Theory of Instruction, by Jerome S. Bruner

"What must be plain in the preceding chapters," Professor Bruner observes toward the end of "Toward a Theory of Instruction," "is that the issues to be faced are far broader than those conventionally comprised in what is called 'education' or 'child-rearing.'" This observation astonished me.

The State of Jewish Belief

The State of Jewish Belief - A symposium

The McCone Report

Big Business

Chinese Puzzle

A Texas Education

For so many of us who converged on Austin, Texas, in the early 1950's from places like Kansas City or Big Spring, the awakening we were to experience did not mean a mere finishing or deepening, and most emphatically did not imply the victory of one set of ideologies over another, but something more basic and simple.

“I'm Proud to be Poor&rdquo

The following tape-recorded interview with a young Puerto Rican living in New York will form part of Oscar Lewis's new book, "La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty, San Juan and New York."

The New Class

Perhaps the profoundest event of this century in the United States has been the growth-to-dominance of corporations, which have become our chosen form for the social and political control of technology. The propertyless New Class is thus most broadly defined as that group of people who gain status and income through organizational position.

Types and Anti-Types

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote to a tippling friend, "You can drink all of the cocktails some of the time and some of the cocktails all of the time, but . . . think about it, Virginia." Fine things can be managed by banter. But I have quoted his sentence here as an example of a form that for want of a better term I call the parodic anti-type.

Time to Murder and Create: The Contemporary Novel in Crisis, by John W. Aldridge

This collection of critical articles and reviews sports a wildly inappropriate title taken from Eliot's "Prufrock." And if Mr. Aldridge has any thesis to offer at all, it is that on the whole the contemporary American novel is disappointing.

The Responsible Electorate, by V. O. Key, Jr.

As might have been expected, this posthumous work by the late V. O. Key, Jr. is the best voting study to appear, although its merits will be apparent only to readers who know the earlier ones.

The Beginners, by Dan Jacobson

A strange incongruity runs through Dan Jacobson's ambitious new novel.

Planning Ahead

Russian Letters

Dialogues

Chinese Puzzle (Concld.)

“Black Power” and Coalition Politics

There are two Americas--black and white--and nothing has more clearly revealed the divisions between them than the debate currently raging around the slogan of "black power."

In Defense of “Black Power”

The effort to encourage Negroes to see themselves as a power bloc, and to act as one, is entirely in keeping with American minority politics, and yet an attempt is apparently being made by both the advocates and the opponents of "black power" to present it as something of a departure.

Music and the Statistical Age

An interview with Igor Stravinsky.

The Unremembered Genocide

The Armenian people--some 250,000 in the United States and about four million throughout the world--consider themselves to have been the victims of a genocide perpetrated almost thirty years before that term was coined. As will be seen, the events left no mark on history; indeed, today there are few who even know that they occurred.

The Fulbright Revolt

Because J. William Fulbright of Arkansas enjoyed long experience in foreign affairs and had definite ideas in that field, a change in the role of the Foreign Relations Committee might have been expected to be accomplished when he became its chairman in 1959. But Fulbright developed a very restrictive theory of the role of the committee and the Senate itself in the field of foreign affairs. What changed Fulbright's mind as to the proper role of the Foreign Relations Committee was the after math of last year's U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic.

Malamud as Jewish Writer

From his earliest stories in the 50's, the relationship between Bernard Malamud's literary imagination and his Jewish background has been a peculiar one.

On Reviewing Plays

When a playwright turns critic, a little bit of him dies. The criticism I am talking about is of a humbler nature.

The Un-American Jew

To the casual observer the Jews of Canada resemble nothing so much as a slightly underdeveloped extension of the sprawling Jewish community of the northeastern United States, with one difference: they have a dated air about them. Their malaise, however, goes deeper than that.

To Criticize the Critic, by T. S. Eliot

"To Criticize the Critic" is a mixed bag of lectures on literary and socio-cultural topics given by T. S. Eliot at various times between 1942 and 1961. These articles are more interesting for their occasional personal glimpses of Eliot than for anything they have to say.

Keeper of the Law, by Louis Ginzberg

Professor Ginzberg's affectionate account of his distinguished father is not formal biography but, as he himself properly calls it, a personal memoir.

The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, by Hans Jonas

Professor Jonas has collected here eleven essays, and nine shorter discussions which are interpolated as appendices to some of the essays. One must say at the outset, it is unfortunate that the title suggests a more unified, if not systematic, work.

The State of War, by Stanley Hoffmann

It was James Mill who claimed that practice without theory is bad practice. Certainly today's students of world affairs could not agree more.

The Last Gentleman, by Walker Percy

The American novelist who would appear up-to-date must go through certain familiar motions. If Walker Percy disdains this path to success, it is not because he is slower-witted than the pop novelists.

Marxism in Modern France, by George Lichtheim

In less than two hundred pages of text, George Lichtheim develops and splendidly illuminates three distinct themes, each of which could well have made a full-length book.

Separationism

Outside Help

Graven Images

Science Defended

The Assassin

Rejoinder

The Failure of the Warren Report

The Warren Commission (known formally as the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy) was born of rampaging suspicions and worldwide controversy. Yet today, two years after the Publication of the report, new voices of dissent are heard.

Masada and Its Scrolls

the account that follows is Professor Yigal Yadin's own interpretations of a series of important archaeological discoveries in an expedition in Israel.

Letter from Tokyo

Discussions with Japanese intellectuals, especially about fundamental questions of military security, are apt to be highly frustrating, as one quickly discovers that, in Japan, thinking takes a basically different direction from the customary norms of logical discourse.

The Prince

A story.

Post-Imperial Britain

Those who have the melancholy privilege of living in the capital of what was once the British Empire have come to know well the feeling that greatness is gone and meanness has come in: meanness of spirit consequent upon the relentless decline of material influence and power.

Negroes, Jews, and Muzhiks

Can anything still be said about Negro and Jew in the United States that has not already been said--by Fiedler, Glazer, and Podhoretz; by Baldwin, Clark, and Rustin; in conferences, speeches, books, and articles? The relation between American Jew and American Negro has even been examined in the perspective of Israel and Africa. Let us add the perspective of Belorussia and the Ukraine.

What Happened to John Barth?

With A novel as peculiar as "Giles Goat-Boy" on their hands, John Barth's publishers wisely took the only course open to them: they played it all or nothing. The book was given the big treatment--big ads, big reviews. I must be the dissenting voice.

TV While the Sun Shines

This summer, I meant to use the opportunity provided by primetime reruns and replacements to explore some of the farther reaches of Darkest Television--to visit corners of the weekly schedule which are hardly dreamed of by "Commentary" readers.

Cannibals and Christians, by Norman Mailer

More eloquently than Burroughs or Genet, with perhaps something even of the jubilant nausea of Kierkegaard, Norman Mailer has advertised himself over the years as a man of lacerated ego and exhausted sensibilities.

The Star and the Cross: Essays on Jewish-Christian Relations, Edited by Mother Katherine Hargrove

Enlightened Christians are now unhappy about what happened in the Holocaust and "The Star and the Cross" is a product of that unhappiness.

Khrushchev: A Career, by Edward Crankshaw

The life of Nikita Khrushchev is full of paradoxes and mysteries.

Three Worlds of Development: The Theory and Practice of International Stratification, by Irving Louis Horowitz

The world, like ancient Gaul, can be divided into partes tres, and such a division may be a useful expository device, provided only that no one really believes in it.

Hopscotch, by Julio Cortazar

Julio Cortazar is a lanky, blue-eyed, boyish-looking man of fifty: a sort of engaging Jimmy Stewart of Latin-American letters.

The Ways of the Will, by Leslie H. Farber

I cannot recall when I last had the pleasure of reviewing a book which seemed to me to succeed perfectly in achieving its author's purpose; and, moreover, did so with such modesty and ease as to run a certain risk of concealing from the reader the importance and complexity of that purpose.

Copyrights

Radical Politics

Hogs & History

JFK

Voting Studies

Honest Differences

Jews and Germans

To speak of Jews and Germans and their relations during the last two centuries is, in the year 1966, a melancholy enterprise.

The Vacancies of August

By November, Of course, it will all be as old as a snapshot. Arriving on that Greek island, I know nothing, not even a word of the language.

The Empty Society

During Eisenhower's second administration, I wrote a book describing how hard it was for young people to grow up in the corporate institutions of American society. Less than ten years later, the feeling is different.

Tensions and Conservatism in American Politics

During this third year of Lyndon Johnson's Presidency, the United States has continued to grow richer in goods and stronger in arms. This year, however, dissatisfaction with the course of public life has heightened.

Does the Jew Exist?

Toward the end of my adolescence I had had enough of being a Jew; or so I dared tell myself. It was, at first, not so much anger as it was impatience and irony.

An End to Pornography?

The image of humankind which pornography presents to its readers is that of a sad, ape-like creature trapped forever behind the bars of its own being, fenced in immutably by its own body.

From a Composer's Journal

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of. Art for art's sake is hardly fashionable, though is there a better sake?

Koufax the Incomparable

Within many a once-promising, now suddenly command-generation Jewish writer, there is a major league ball player waiting to leap out. Baseball was never a bowl of cherries for the Jewish player.

The Age of Keynes, by Robert Lekachman

It is quite a long time now since Keynes became firmly established as economic orthodoxy in Britain and the United States.

Hebrew Poems from Spain: Introduction, Translation, and Notes by David Goldstein

The flowering of Hebrew poetry in Spain in the two centuries between 1000 and 1200 C.E. is a perpetual challenge to scholarship and to criticism.

Between the Lines, by Dan Wakefield

Macaulay once estimated the lifespan of his essays, articles, and reviews--what today would be called his "pieces"--to be at most six weeks after their initial appearance in print. In his particular case, he could not have been more wrong.

The Knower and the Known, by Marjorie Grene

Although the conceptual split between the knower and the known is an ancient philosophical problem, in its most pressing modern form it derives from the metaphysics of Descartes, where one finds the beginnings of a powerfully influential divorce of the knower from the known.

Alpha and Omega, by Isaac Rosenfeld

Isaac Rosenfeld's death in 1956, at the age of thirty-eight, produced the same shock and sorrow as did the death of Franz Kline in 1962.

The Armenian Case

Anti-Semitism

The Invisible World of S. Y. Agnon

I cannot write about the work of Agnon with any real authority because I have not read him in Hebrew and know only those of his writings which have been translated into English. I can only give my impressions for what they are worth and hope that I do not misrepresent him.

Three Stories: First Kiss

A story.

Three Stories: The Lady and the Peddler

A story.

Three Stories: Fable of the Goat

A story.

Agnon's Quest

S. Y. Agnon's most informed readers think of him as an epic writer, as the novelist par excellence in his tradition. These are large claims, and, within limits, they would seem to be borne out by the scope of Agnon's interests. At the same time, however, they are at odds with the unique qualities of his achievement, and against the grain of his essential gift.

Saving the Humanities

In the autumn of 1965 the Congress enacted Public Law 89-209, which brought into being a new governmental agency with a mandate "to develop and promote a broadly conceived national policy in support for the humanities and the arts in the U.S...." The budget, in the case of the Humanities Endowment, is based on total appropriations for fiscal 1966-67 of $4.5 million. By the standards up to now obtaining in the humanities, this is affluence beyond the dreams of avarice.

The Theater of Commitment

A recent literary conference announced its topic as Commitment or Alienation. I have accepted the word Commitment for my title because I am not willing to have it relegated to TV symposia and Sunday supplements, because, in short, I think more than a mere fashion is involved. Behind the current discussion of Commitment is the perennial discussion as to whether art should teach or give pleasure.

Auschwitz on Stage

The Auschwitz trials began in Frankfurt in 1963 and lasted one year and eight months. "The Investigation," by Peter Weiss, is an edited transcript of this trial.

Church & State

In his article in the July "Commentary," Milton Himmelfarb took up arms against the principle of complete separation of church and state. I hope to show that continued adherence to strict separation is essential to the freedom of us all.

Expanding Liberties: Freedom's Gains in Postwar America, by Milton R. Konvitz

Milton Konvitz has written an excellent account of the vanguard activities of the Supreme Court in postwar America.

The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge, by Malcolm Muggeridge

Malcolm Muggeridge revels in undocumented revelation. A piquant example is to be found in the essay on Max Beerbohm in this volume.

Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism, by Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark

There is something terribly American about the solemnity, and the optimism of this study.

Dirty Politics, by Bruce L. Felknor

We professors are sometimes accused of throwing our students' term papers down the stairs, basing the grades on where they land. With this book, Bruce L. Felknor exposes himself to a similar charge.

The Illusionless Man: Fantasies and Meditations, by Allen Wheelis

Dr. Wheelis is a psychoanalyst who writes about disillusionment in the literary forms of fantasy and the meditative essay. Thus he may seem to be inviting us to forget for the moment what psychology does in its usual scientific dress.