Masaryk's Birthplace

The Social Sciences

Scientists and Orthodoxy

The Protocols

I. The New York Intellectuals

Irving Howe's article, "The New York Intellectuals: A Chronicle and a Critique," has so many good things in it that one is loath to enter a dissent.

II. On Music Criticism

Since I have been so far spared the fearsome thunderbolts of B. H. Haggin (I fully expected a few to be hurled my way for some dissenting views on Toscanini I once expressed), and since I am no longer primarily active as a critic, I thought I might be permitted to comment on his bold attack on the music critics.

The Black Revolution & the Jewish Question

About a half-century ago, Louis Marshall, the eminent constitutional lawyer who was also president of the American Jewish Committee, said firmly: "We do not recognize the existence of a Jewish Question in the United States." For the past quarter of a century, there has been no serious trace of political anti-Semitism in America.

The Democrats After 1968

It has already become a cliche that, despite most predictions, the Democratic coalition held together pretty well in the 1968 election--almost well enough, indeed, to have produced a miracle.

The New York School Crisis

"The axe," Sir Walter Raleigh told his executioner, "is a sharp medicine but a sure cure for all ills." A good many people seem ready to resort to Sir Walter's prescription to remedy the ills of New York's schools.

Is White Racism the Problem?

One of the less fortunate results of the black revolution has been the development of a by now familiar ritual in which the white liberal is accused of racism and responds by proclaiming himself and the entire society guilty as charged.

On Pro Football

By common consent, the most striking sports phenomenon in the 1950's has been the displacement of baseball by professional football as the Great American Game.

Witchcraft and the Movies

Like "The Graduate," the film "Rosemary's Baby" calls for explanation as a phenomenon of the times.

The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus

There have been few more striking examples of the transformation which takes place when a man becomes a dedicated writer (or painter or scientist for that matter) than George Orwell.

The Urban Prospect, by Lewis Mumford

For over thirty years now, Lewis Mumford has been a major American prophet and preacher, calling for drastic change not only in our architecture and planning but in our entire civilization.

Humanistic Values in the Bible, by Zvi Adar

Matthew Arnold, writing in "Culture and Anarchy" of the "ineffaceable difference" between Hebraism and Hellenism, concluded that "the face which human nature presents when it passes from the hands of one of them to those of the other, is no longer the same."

Film 67/68, edited by Richard Schickel and John Simon; Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, by Pauline Kael

"Film 67/68" is an anthology of reviews from the past year by the members of the National Society of Film Critics, an organization characterized on the dust jacket as consisting of "the nation's most perceptive movie reviewers."

Children, Poverty, and Family Allowances, by James C. Vadakin

Professor Vadakin's temperate and well-documented case for cash allowances to children as an anti-poverty measure appears just at the outset of four, eight, or more years of stagnation or retrogression in national, economic, and social policy.

The Moral Imagination

Civil Disobedience

Kol Nidre

Puritanism

Obscenity & the Law

History as Drama

"The Great White Hope," by Howard Sackler, is the sort of play for which all of us who battle for the theater's reputation should be grateful.

The Ghost of Social-Fascism

Why should anyone today want to bother with such a relic of the past as "the theory of social-fascism"? One reason is that it once bothered us so much; another is that it may be bothering us again.

A Writer Between Generations

The present essay, in expanded form, constitutes the introduction to a collection of David Bazelon's essays, "Nothing But a Fine Tooth Comb."

The Jewish Community & the Jewish Condition

If one travels around much among American Jews, attending the various rites, cultural or religious, by which they celebrate their own self-conscious sense of community, it is terribly easy to become disheartened, depressed, or simply sickened.

The Big Money

Half of all Americans die broke. Born with nothing, they accumulate nothing.

Faith in Israel

In "The End of the Jewish People?," a book which appeared in 1967 and which was overtaken by the Six-Day War almost as it came off the press, Georges Friedmann, the French sociologist, wrote: "There is no Jewish nation...." This statement was not true even when it was written.

Beyond New Leftism

American students created two momentous political events last year: the primary victory of Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire, and the anti-war demonstrations in Chicago.

Steady Work, by Irving Howe; Thomas Hardy, by Irving Howe

When the New Left was just beginning in Britain, in the late 1950's, someone put me in touch with Irving Howe and we corresponded a little, keeping in contact intermittently over the years. All that I saw of Irving Howe's work made me feel close to him, in political thinking.

Post Mortem: The Jews in Germany Today, by Leo Katcher

When the Federal Republic of West Germany came into being, John J. McCloy, Military Governor and first High Commissioner of the fledgling democracy, admonished the German people that the world would judge the degree of their moral improvement by the manner in which they treated the Jews still resident in their country. Germans ever since have taken this admonition seriously.

The Pump House Gang, by Tom Wolfe; The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe

If Tom Wolfe is to be believed, journals like "Commentary" are on the way out.

Intervention and Revolution, by Richard J. Barnet

Vietnam is the last intervention, Mr. Nixon tells us; there are to be no more Vietnams.

Liberalism & Columbia

Kurt Tucholsky

The Electoral College

"The populist principle [of faith in majority rule] in its unqualified state is simplistic and insufficient," argues Alexander M. Bickel. Hence, he concludes, the direct popular election of Presidents would be a mistake. I disagree with his conclusion.

Is American Jewry in Crisis?

It is easy to praise the Athenians to Athenians: thus Plato. If easy, then unnecessary; but if necessary, then perhaps not easy? Looking back, I see that for some years now, after each Presidential or midterm election I have found it necessary to praise the Jews to Jews. By praise I mean defend.

A Condition of Servitude-A Story

A story.

The Prospects of War in the Middle East

As the hopes of Americans for a negotiated settlement to the war in Vietnam continue to rise, popular apprehension appears to be shifting increasingly toward the Middle East, where, it seems, conditions proceed inexorably from bad to worse.

Among the Aged

Dorothy Rabinowitz describes her experiences in an old-age home.

Beneath the Moon

In these stirring days when (to crib from one of my contemporaries) we may expect that the strains of "I Love Lucy" will soon be beaming out over the craters of Earth's satellite, an air of anticlimax inevitably attaches itself to our sublunary affairs.

A Memory of Mexico

The Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Mexico City where, on the evening of October 2, 1968, some two hundred students, women, and adolescents were shot down by police and soldiers, lies at the end of the long Paseo de la Reforma, in the district of Tlatelolco.

110 Livingston Street, by David Rogers

One can scarcely conceive of an issue more important to the future of the cities than the failure of the New York City Board of Education and the political structure of the City of New York to institute an effective desegregation of the city's schools during the 1960's.

Thinking About Women, by Mary Ellmann

Mary Ellmann's book, "Thinking About Women," is a diatribe against a stereotype.

The Joys of Yiddish, by Leo Rosten

An anonymous student inscribes "Marcel Proust is a yenta" on a wall; a Pentagon official speaks of the "bagel strategy"; a writer for the London "Economist" captions a column on mortgage rates "Home Loan Hoo-Ha." What does it all mean--if anything?

A Short History of Modern Greece, by C. M. Woodhouse; The Web of Modern Greek Politics, by Jane Clark Carey and Andrew Galbraith Carey

Most major developments in Greece in the last two decades have been significantly influenced by American policy. It is therefore unfortunate for the United States, and sometimes disastrous for Greece, that the American public remains largely uninformed on events in that country.

Notes from the New Underground, edited by Jesse Kornbluth

The news from the New Underground is this: Square America drinks too much and fornicates too little. We are hung up and strung out. We are hypocrites about our professed values and we exploit our fellows. We make war.

White Racism

Jews, Blacks & Wasps

Film Critics

Liberalism & Activism

Controversy is bad for the mind and worse for the heart.

The School Strike

Mr. Goldbloom's article is the latest polemic in a series of pro-union arguments in the school controversy.

Blacks, Jews & the Intellectuals

Are Jews actually threatened by black anti-Semitism? Is there an alliance, or a potential alliance, developing between black militants and the WASP establishment? If indeed there is a threat to Jews, how can it best be countered?

The Campus & Its Critics

Is it wrong to find something curious in the current hatred directed toward universities and colleges? After all, there was a time, not long ago, when places of higher education were relatively immune from strong feelings of any kind.

Toward a History of the Holocaust

A year ago, at the beginning of April 1968, a conference was held in Jerusalem to mark the 25th anniversary of the ghetto uprisings against the Nazis in Europe. It was convened by Yad Vashem. The purpose of Yad Vashem is to perpetuate the memory of those who died in the Holocaust through a program of research and publication.

For and Against Godard

Seven years ago, I published a long piece on "Breathless" which may well have been (and, apart from brief reviews, was almost certainly) the first serious criticism in praise of Godard in English, and during the course of which I invoked comparisons with "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon."

Notes on Aggression

About violence we don't even seem to know the right questions, let alone the answers. Everyone is aware now of human aggression in a way we never were before.

TV Dreams

Anyone who calls himself--or allows himself to be called--a television critic cannot afford to neglect the junk that clutters the commercial network schedules.

And Other Stories, by John O'Hara; Mosby's Memoirs, by Saul Bellow; Under the Boardwalk, by Norman Rosten; A House Divided, by Sara; The Seance, by Isaac Bashevis Singer; Journal/Nocturnal, by E. M. Broner; Through the Wilderness, by Dan Jacobson

It is almost as difficult to generalize about the short story as about the novel, except to say that its shortness offers special possibilities for concentration and intensity.

The President's Men, by Patrick Anderson

The President, as Richard Neustadt says in "Presidential Power," faces "the classic problem of the man on top: how to be on top in fact as well as in name"--in a word, how to secure power for himself.

The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, by Eric F. Goldman

Toward the end of his intermittently interesting book about the first three years of the Johnson administration, Eric F. Goldman comes to have "sizable doubts about the whole conception of the position of White House 'intellectual-in-residence.'"

The Beatles, by Hunter Davies; The Beatles, by Julius Fast; The Beatles, by Anthony Scaduto; The Beatles Book, edited by Edward E. Davis

Popular artists communicate on the same level to everyone, teenager and intellectual alike. The Beatles, like Chaplin, strike a universal chord in their listeners.

After the Tradition, by Robert Alter

By taking as his major theme modern Jewish writing--and in this context modern also generally implies, to use his own term, "post-traditional"--Robert Alter has staked out a difficult course for himself.

Poor Statistics

Social-Fascism, Then & Now

Non-eyewitness

Jewish Unity

In Defense of Yiddish

A Question of Faith

Stancemanship

The Last Generation

The Democrats

In mid-January of this year, at the first meeting of the new Democratic National Committee, Herbert Humphrey delivered a 53-minute analysis of the defeat of the party's national ticket--without once mentioning Vietnam, Chicago, or Lyndon Johnson.

The Position of Noam Chomsky

I think I would feel an extra obligation to attack the war in Vietnam if I were on the staff of MIT--one of the props, after all, of the American defense establishment. So it is not hard to guess the motives which must have prompted MIT's Noam Chomsky to write "American Power and the New Mandarins," a book of polemic against American power.

The Alternatives in the Middle East

Is there any hope of breaking the Middle-Eastern deadlock through concerted action by the two superpowers working together with Britain and France? One can only answer this question by examining the interests and positions of all the parties within the immediate circle of the crisis.

How People Change

We have not far to look for suffering. It's in the streets, fills the air, lies upon our friends. Faces of pain look at us from newspaper, from TV screen. We know them: black man swinging in the warm wind, sealed cattle cars rumbling through the bitter cold, the glare of Auschwitz at midnight, the sweet smell.

Sour or Suntanned, It Makes No Difference-A Story

A story.

Portnoy & His Creator

Philip Roth's first book, Goodbye Columbus, was accused by many of ignoring the Jewish tradition, of lacking ruth for the six million, and of displaying Jewish self-hatred. Now, in "Portnoy's Complaint," Roth goes even further than before in this paradoxical effort to help the Jews by reviling them.

Groping Toward Freedom: The Living Theatre

There were some three hundred of us milling about the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, audience-actors all, shuffling here and there to our own choreography, creating our personal actions and dialogue.

The Example of Solzhenitsyn

The scene is a room in a hostel for girl students at Moscow University. The time is December 1949. There are four girls in the room. One's name is Muza. She is among the most minor of the many characters in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's long novel, "The First Circle."

Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty, by Daniel P. Moynihan

The title of this fascinating book has a certain ironic resonance, for its author is well on the way toward becoming the most misunderstood figure in American public life.

Anti-Memoirs, by Andre Malraux

In 1934 Andre Malraux flew to Mareb to photograph what might have been the ancient capital of the Queen of Sheba.

Literary Essays, by David Daiches; More Literary Essays, by David Daiches

There is so much that is good in the critical writing of David Daiches that I find myself wondering why the sum effect of his criticism so often seems less satisfying than it ought to be.

The Last Years of the Church, by David Poling; The Search for a Usable Future, by Martin E. Marty

David Poling's "The Last Years of the Church" appears to have been written for the benefit of the maiden aunts of the religious world, who will undoubtedly get something out of its tedious recital of well-aired facts and ideas.

The Insanity Defense, by Abraham S. Goldstein

The Anglo-Saxons have an obsession with insanity as a legal issue. I have often thought it would be a good idea if we were to pursue the conscientious and enterprising Mrs. Dorothy C. Tompkins and induce her to devote her next learned bibliography to the multitudinous writings on the subject since the days of the unfortunate M'Naghten.

A New Foreign Policy for the United States, by Hans J. Morgenthau

The country is pregnant with a new foreign policy, conceived--as with life--in passion rather than reason.

American Jewry in Crisis?

On George Orwell

It was not until now that I read Mr. George Woodcock's interesting and well informed review of George Orwell's "Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters." I agree with most of what Mr. Woodcock says, but one passage in his review is really too much to swallow.

Reflections on Youth Movements

I can well imagine that on Saturday nights across this country, at hundreds of faculty parties where a year and a half ago the main subject of discussion was the war in Vietnam, thousands of professors and their wives now passionately debate the pros and cons of the student movement.

Power in the Academy

A reminiscence and a parable.

World Politics, 1969

The second anniversary of the Six-Day War supplies as good a peg as any on which to hang some remarks about the current Middle Eastern turmoil.

New Israeli Fiction

Something new has clearly been happening in Israeli fiction.

Nixon's Program

Superficially the initial months of the Nixon administration can be interpreted as something of a relief from the exaggerated fears and dismal visions of the President's more devoted enemies.

Death & the Physician

For most of us in the Western world, premature death is no longer imminent.

Birds' Heads and Graven Images

The study of what may most conveniently be termed Jewish art (though in some cases it is not Jewish, and in some it is not art), begun only a very short while ago, is now making rapid strides.

CBW: Chemical and Biological Warfare, edited by Steven Rose Chemical and Biological Warfare, by Seymour Hersh The Silent Weapons, by Robin Clarke Chemical Warfare: A Study in Restraints, by Frederic J. Brown

The United States, its enemies, and its allies are arming themselves with poison gases and disease germs for use in warfare.

A Peace Policy for Europe, by Willy Brandt; Herausforderung und Antwort-Ein Programm fur Europa, by Franz Josef Strauss

With elections in Germany approaching this fall, books are blossoming forth by prominent politicians who regard themselves as candidates for the chancellor's chair, currently occupied by Kurt Georg Kiesinger.

After Auschwitz, by Richard L. Rubenstein; The Religious Imagination, by Richard L. Rubenstein

God may be dead, but the Jewish people must live, although they are not a chosen people and there is nothing sacred about their existence.

The Age of Discontinuity, by Peter Drucker

Disenchantment with large organizations has in recent times become a widespread social attitude. It is common to all points of the political spectrum from Left to Right.

Blacks & Jews

Portnoy Defended

The May Issue

Author's Reply

TV Comedy

I was a little irritated with one of my English department colleagues the other day. This very strict and uncompromising scholar peremptorily rejected his proposed teaching schedule for next year because it included a Monday evening class. However, all annoyance melted when I learned the reason: he didn't want to miss "Laugh-in."

The Price of Community Control

Like everything else in the cities, education seems to defy both management and comprehension The struggle over urban schools has in recent years grown progressively more ferocious, with casualties mounting accordingly.

Thanksgiving-A Story

A story.

Hebraism and Hellenism

Matthew Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy" was published one hundred years ago. In an inaugural lecture, Roy Fuller, the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, reminds us that "Sweetness and Light," the first chapter, was Arnold's final lecture when he was Professor of Poetry.

Radical Agonies

Any thoughtful radical might at any time since the first decade of this century have chosen the melodramatic title Christopher Lasch has selected for his essays and reviews of the past two years on American radicalism past and present.

Way Past the Hudson

Ten years ago, when everything was different, the novel "Mrs. Bridge" by Evan S. Connell, Jr. attracted attention as one of those few American books which succeed in telling us something about that mysterious realm, the American Middlewest of the middle classes.

A Season in the Stands

Football is not only the most popular sport, it is the most intellectual one. It is in fact, the intellectuals' secret vice.

Kurt Gerstein, by Saul Friedlander

The story of Kurt Gerstein involves one of the most bizarre episodes of the Nazi era, a period of human history not lacking in the fantastic.

The Moguls, by Norman Zierold; Thalberg, by Bob Thomas; The Studio, by John Gregory Dunne

Whatever else it may be, there is one thing that Hollywood is, was, and always will be: a business.

The F.B.I. in Our Open Society, by Harry and Bonaro Overstreet

In an era when books like Jerome Skolnick's "Justice Without Trial," James Q. Wilson's "Varieties of Police Behavior," and Paul Chevigny's "Police Power" have systematically analyzed the social functions of law-enforcement agencies, it is nothing short of foolish to believe that the FBI responds "simply and literally to instructions given it by an appropriate authority."

The Fiscal Revolution in America, by Herbert Stein; Monetary vs. Fiscal Policy, by Milton Friedman and Walter W. Heller

For American Keynesians February 1964 was a month to remember. After more than a year of haggling, Congress finally enacted a major income-tax cut at a time when a budgetary deficit already existed and the economy of its own accord was expanding.

Hanoi, by Mary McCarthy; Trip to Hanoi, by Susan Sontag

For at least four years the intellectual community poured out a steady stream of reasoned and informed criticism of the Vietnam war without seeming to have any appreciable effect on events.

Campus Rhetoric

Cold War

Jewish Art

Student Protest

Is There a Backlash Vote?

The past political year has seen a number of events which, at least on the surface, have appeared to herald the downfall of the traditional party structure.

The Second Year of the Cold War: A Memoir & An Anticipation

A memoir.

The Oath-A Story

A story.

The Problem of the Golden Rule

Like a good many New Yorkers, I've often wondered whether I was going to be mugged. Never have people dealt so briskly with strangers as now.

Soviet Jewry Today

Like Poland's, Russia's Jews are subjected to various kinds of discrimination, but unlike Poland's, they are not permitted to leave.

Nabokov's Ardor

Vladimir Nabokov possesses what is probably the most finely cultivated sense of form of any living writer, and so there is a satisfying justness in the fact that not only his individual works but also the sequence of his books should evince a formal harmony.

Truth in the Courtroom

To what extent can criminal trials be expected to establish the truth about historical events? The question is a serious one, but it has been confounded by a discrepancy that exists between the legal and the popular conception of what a trial does.

Pornography & Propaganda

The recent outcropping of dirty weekly papers was peddled openly, in New York at least, on regular newsstands, and purported to be leading a crusade against the older and acceptable type of dirty papers on these stands.

The Origins of Socialism, by George Lichtheim

A scholarly yet compact introduction to socialist theory has not been available in English for some years. George Lichtheim's new book, then, fills a perceived need.

Real People, by Alison Lurie

The novels of Alison Lurie are almost enough to make one believe in the increasingly dubious notion that reading fiction is fun.

Prayer in Judaism, by Bernard Martin

The Prayer Book, or Siddur, forms with the Bible and Talmud, one of the major repositories of Jewish tradition, yet it is a work that has received comparatively little study in general evaluations of Judaism.

Nihilists, by Ronald Hingley

In 1862 Ivan Turgenev, that sensitive observer of Russian trends, published "Fathers and Sons," and created a character who became a type of iconoclastic rebel--Bazarov--and a label that was to mark a generation of rebels--Nihilism.

The World of the Thriller, by Ralph Harper

In "New Essays in Philosophical Theology" Basil Mitchell proposes a parable to illustrate the difficulties in deciding what constitutes counter-evidence for a belief in God.

The Economy of Cities, by Jane Jacobs

Reading Jane Jacobs in New York in the summer of 1969 is, I imagine, a little like reading "Walden" in a Chinese commune.

Learning & the Schools

Jewish Belief

The Middle East

The Fantasy of Black Nationalism

Whatever the 1960's may go down in history for, the resurgence of "black nationalism" will surely be high on, if not at the top of, the list.

Goodbye to Poland

I decided to leave Poland. Of course, that decision was made not all at once but a little at a time; it was the product of innumerable insignificant details. But this time it's final: I'm on my way to the Dutch embassy.

In Defense of the 50's

Among the young, the word has got around that the 50's were not a good time to be alive in. Or perhaps one should say--to grow up in.

Decline & Fall of Dingdong-Daddyland-A Story

A story.

De Gaulle-A Summing Up

The French army in 1940 had more tanks than the Germans: it just did not know how to use them, having failed to listen to the warnings uttered a few years earlier by a then widely unknown staff officer named Charles de Gaulle.

On Walter Benjamin

"For the critic," Walter Benjamin once wrote, "the highest court of appeal is his own colleagues. Not the public. Even less posterity." The statement reflects the stance of intellectual rigor and self-skeptical inner distance that Benjamin maintained toward everything he cared about seriously.

The Kingdom and the Power, by Gay Talese

"The New York Times" is far and away America's greatest newspaper. Its owners, executives, and upper-echelon editors know this and exult in the fact.

Hayim Greenberg Anthology, edited by Marie Syrkin

Hayim Greenberg appeared too late on the Russian Jewish scene--just before its virtual end in the October Revolution.

Norma Jean, by Fred Lawrence Guiles

Guiles's book is pleasant enough, decent, well-intentioned, and well-researched.

The Unperfect Society, by Milovan Djilas

"As the chapters that follow will illustrate, it is my belief that society cannot be perfect." Shall we laugh or cry? The latter, I assure you.

Notes from the Century Before, by Edward Hoagland

"Notes from the Century Before" is a document unlike any I have ever read.

Author's Reply

Vietnam, the Cold War & Other Matters

In general, the "International Communist Conspiracy" is a perfect propaganda device to justify actions that reinforce and extend American hegemony.

The Decline of Liberal Politics

We cannot find an explanation for the decline of liberal politics in this country without questioning the relevance of the modern tradition of liberalism, and even the relevance of the Left.

The Urban Mood

The numerous mayoralty elections in big cities this year should, some argue, tell us once and for all whether the "backlash" voter now has the upper hand. His arrival has long been predicted but never fully proved.

Journal from Israel

Edward Grossman's journal from a recent visit to Israel.

The Myth of American Affluence

In 1958 John Kenneth Galbraith, as his publishers tell us, "added a new phrase to our language" by declaring that ours was an "affluent society." But how many Americans feel so very affluent?

Biblical Legends

A book which for many centuries was seen by adherents of two great religions as the true Word of God is now seen to be a collection of diverse works of very different dates intimately related to a great mass of other literature and mythology emanating from the same part of the world which produced that book.

Moon Watching

In the very week that technology achieved its apotheosis in the moon landings, "Life" devoted pride of place on the cover and inside the issue of July 18 to a strikingly different phenomenon--the rural youth communes.

The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968, by Andrew Sarris

The title of Andrew Sarris's new book is really a misnomer. The appropriate title (although more awkward) would be "The English-Language Cinema," for the book has individual sections not only for American directors but also for English directors.

Weimar Germany's Left-Wing Intellectuals, by Istvan Deak

Among those who chastise today's radical intellectuals for their "irresponsible negativism," the example of Weimar Germany has often served as an analogy of compelling weight.

A Set of Variations, by Frank O'Connor

The Irish have an insidious gift for making their national failings attractive.

The Great Society's Poor Law: A New Approach to Poverty, by Sar A. Levitan

It should be made clear at the outset that this is not a book about poverty.

Industrial Society in Communist China, by Barry M. Richman

This massive volume lives up to its subtitle: "A First-hand Study of Chinese Economic Development and Management--With Significant Comparisons with Industry in India, the USSR, Japan, and the United States."

The Cold War

“Thanksgiving”—Pro & Con

The “Cream”

Community Control

Soviet Oppression

Greeks, Jews & Macmillian

Oh! Nudity!

The depressing thing about "Oh! Calcutta!" is that, for all its cool amusements and gritty determination to titillate, it ends only by proving that our society has a long way to go before it can produce and enjoy a truly licentious spectacle.

Envy; or, Yiddish in America-A Novella

A story.

The Politics of ABM

Issues have lives of their own. Men cannot often choose the ground on which to fight major issues; they must take what the world offers up. The recent controversy over the Safeguard anti-ballistic missile is a classic case in point.

Is There a New Republican Majority?

It is not easy to argue that Richard Nixon's election marks a revival of Republican fortunes.

The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition

How can it be that Christianity, regarding itself the successor and completion of Judaism, should have elected to take into itself the body and substance of that Jewish teaching which it believed to be defective, which it regarded itself as having in measure rejected, in measure transformed, in measure repaired and fulfilled?

On Eric Hoffer

To judge by a recent flurry of articles in important magazines, and the echoes of Marxist-Leninist slogans coming out of the New Left, the working-class white American may be in for a good deal of attention in the next few years.

Social Change and History, by Robert A. Nisbet

Robert Nisbet adopts in this book the same approach to intellectual history that he employed in his previous book, "The Sociological Tradition."

A New Jewish Theology in the Making, by Eugene B. Borowitz; How Can a Jew Speak of Faith Today? by Eugene B. Borowitz

For a long time now, many Jewish thinkers and scholars have proudly, even smugly, declared that there is no such creature as Jewish theology.

Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, by Carlos Baker; Henry James, The Treacherous Years, by Leon. Edel

Near the end of his recently published biography of Hemingway, Carlos Baker quotes with some relish the writer's backhanded tribute to Henry James.

A Long Journey, by George Blake Charney

There have been a great many autobiographies of leading Communists and ex-Communists, both in the United States and elsewhere.

My Turn at Bat, by Ted Williams

His eyes were 20/10, the Navy medics announced, a pair in ten thousand.

Truman's Speech & Noam Chomsky

Antigone & the New Left

Black Nationalism---Fact & Fantasy

Socialism and the Future

Some years ago, writing on the prospects for American capitalism, I began by asserting that the capitalist system, whatever the strains and stresses to which it would be subject, bade fair to remain the dominant system in America and Western Europe during our lifetimes, and that any serious attempt to project large-scale social trends should begin from that premise. Now I should like to undertake a similar speculative examination of the prospects for socialism.

The End of Culture

Art, the arts, "high culture," has lost its hold on us. We are still wedded, I suppose, us and the arts, but we live with them unaroused, unenthralled.

Hebrew As She Is Spoke

There are, in fact, two Hebrew languages in existence today, one that is supposedly spoken and one that generally is.

Coming of Age in Chicago

I have always doubted that Chicago ever even faintly resembled the city of Carl Sandburg's poem, but I know for certain that by the time I was born there the city of the big shoulders had developed a serious slouch.

A Real Russian Ikon

A story.

From the Ruins of Empire

Among the penalties of having pitched one's tent within the ruins of a collapsing empire, the agonizing spectacle of injured pride masquerading as stoicism must surely rank foremost for any naturalized inhabitant of the British Isles these days.

1968

Once more into the snows of New Hampshire! Once more the tear gas of Chicago! There's no escaping the 1968 election.

Nietzsche in His Letters

"Have I been understood?" Nietzsche asks repeatedly in "Ecce Homo," a book he completed less than a month before madness enveloped him. He had every reason to raise the question.

An Unfinished Woman, by Lillian Hellman

Not the least important thing about a memoir is who has written it. Some lives are just more naturally transformed into material for drama than are others.

The Trial of Dr. Spock, by Jessica Mitford

In retrospect--after, that is, the Chicago explosion of 1968, after campus upheavals and ghetto convulsions--the acts which led to the trial and conviction of Dr. Benjamin Spock by a Boston Federal District Court appear rather tame.

The Politics of War, by Gabriel Kolko; Empire and Revolution, by David Horowitz

The "official" history of the cold war, misleading in fact and disastrous in impact, has long been in need of revision, and most of us who still have some memory of the end of the war and the beginnings of the postwar world have always known as much.

The Flight of the Wild Gander, by Joseph Campbell

In an essay in 1953 in "Partisan Review" called "The Myth and the Powerhouse," Philip Rahv accused certain critics and philosophers then writing about myth of trying to escape from history by bootlegging religion. Rahv's charges underline the necessarily problematic nature of all writing on myth for a liberal, secular audience.