Imagine the possible political arrangements of international society as if they were laid out along a continuum marked off according to the degree of centralization. Obviously, there are alternative markings; the recognition and enforcement of human rights could also be …
The Human Stain by Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin, 2000, 365 pp., $26 What Philip Roth has always needed—and what, like Joseph K., he has been unfairly denied—is a proper trial. If not for the attacks on Jewish suburbia in Goodbye, …
The historical lesson of the kibbutz in pre state Israel lies in the deep pragmatism of its early leaders, who were committed to understanding young people and so created a medium for them to lead lives relevant to their personal …
Retrospectives on the twentieth century give ample space to its horrors. Natural catastrophes are overshadowed by wars and other human made disasters: six million murdered in the German Holocaust, thirty million starved to death in Mao’s Great Leap Forward, eleven …
Jo-Ann Mort and Gary Brenner present a kind of recipe for saving the Israeli kibbutzim from the existential-economic-demographic–ideological crisis they are undergoing (“Kibbutzim: Can They Survive the New Israel?”, Dissent, Summer 2000). Their article is mainly a description and analysis …
Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic by Jim DeRogatis Broadway Books (a division of Random House), 2000, 332 pp., $15.95 “If love is truly going out of fashion forever, which I do …
At the risk of being called a spy, or worse, a journalist, I set out, entry visa in hand, to cross the Serbian border. As I traveled by car service to the border, my companions consisted of another American, a …
On January 14, 1991, when the first Iraqi scuds hit Israel, one of the central commitments of the kibbutz—that children are best educated among their peers in the communal children’s house—shattered within a few hours. Parents swooped up their children …
On April 7, just two months after the formation of a coalition government that includes members of Jörg Haider’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), Alfred Gusenbauer, newly designated chief of the Austrian Socialist Party (SPÖ), a former youth leader not known …
Crabcakes by James Alan McPherson Simon & Schuster, 1998, 288 pp., $13 Pulitzer-Prize winner James Alan McPherson has written two highly regarded collections of short fiction, and the pleasures and insights offered by Crabcakes are those of a well-crafted story. …
Arnold Kaufman’s The Radical Liberal was originally published as an entire issue of Dissent and then released as a book by Atherton Press in 1968. Read today, it smacks of its time. One of America’s most divisive presidential elections is …
Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens are playing leading roles in the British debate on globalization and the “third way.” This fall, their jointly edited book Global Capitalism will be published in the United States by the New Press. It begins …
Ordinarily, when a writer responds to a review, he discusses what is said in it. As Chomsky can’t be bothered, for those who missed what I wrote, I will summarize it in a few sentences. I said that Chomsky dismisses …
The governor of California charges that an industry-backed proposal to deregulate toxic waste disposal would put the polluters in charge of the pollution control setup. The director of the state health department adds that the plan would create “a backlog …
Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi William Morrow & Co., 1999, 662 pp., $27.50 Are American men in crisis, entrapped in a consumer culture without the opportunity to pursue meaningful work, and in psychic despair, searching …
