The exhibition Freud: Conflict and Culture opened at the Library of Congress last October after several years of highly publicized controversy and one postponement. Not since King Tut came to New York’s Metropolitan Museum in the early seventies has an …
As the Lewinsky scandal unfolded, the New York Times was chronicling how New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani was straying from the straight and narrow path of political morality. The mayor’s actions deserve more attention than they have attracted, because, …
Why did the Russian economy go into a nosedive? Should one blame Russia? Or the capitalist system and especially financial markets? The crisis built up as the Russian government failed to collect the taxes it needed to finance its expenses. …
For anyone who cares about democratic values, the most significant thing about the impeachment debacle was the vapidity of the surrounding debate—its failure to raise serious questions about the structure or future of American democracy. This, and not the question …
Feminism’s ideological diversity makes fools of those who generalize grandly about the movement, but many critics are undeterred. A foolish view of feminists as a monolithic group of male bashers and prudes was eagerly adopted by impeachment pundits. Confusing feminism …
Buried deep in the New York Times metropolitan section on November 6, 1998, was an article I had been awaiting far too long: “7-Month Labor Dispute Is Over at 8 Jewish Cemeteries in Area.” I had been watching one group …
Did Bill Clinton’s impeachment crisis represent a continuation of the culture wars from the nineteen sixties? My three-part answer is: it did; did not; and vice versa. To wit: (1) The impeachment did represent a continuation of the old culture …
Solutions to problems often carry unanticipated consequences. This is the case with part-time work in America today. Part-time work can be a reasonable way of dealing with the work-family dilemma. It has been discussed widely in the press, among corporate …
The Red Atlantis: Communist Culture in Absence of Communism by J. Hoberman Temple University Press, 1999, 304 pp., $34.95 Joe Wood had a voice as deep as a doublebass, and he spoke as he wrote: low, slowly, softly. He forced …
Rational Exuberance: The Influence of Generation X On the New American Economy by Meredith Bagby E.P. Dutton, 1998, 274 pp., $24.95 I have before me a book on the political economy of Generation X that resembles nothing so much as …
The financial crisis that erupted in east Asia in mid 1997 has thrust millions of workers back into dire poverty and shattered an entire decade of economic development in the region. The crisis has also flared and spread within the …
The end of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial was a signal to the nation’s varsity pundits—time to begin overall evaluations of l’affaire Monica. The award for “most lugubrious wrap-up” goes to David Gergen. Speaking on a panel aired by C-SPAN, Gergen …
Andre Gide: A Life in the Present by Alan Sheridan Harvard University Press, 1999, 634 pp., $35 One of the hardest tasks of André Gide’s long life was a translation of Hamlet, which he completed in 1942 after twenty years …
I think that I am in favor of the fourth way, or maybe the fifth; anyway, I am sure there is a “way” coming that will be better than all the others. The advantage of four and five is that …
Since the late 1970s, feminist theorists and scholars have been attacking, subverting, and attempting to dethrone the universalist liberalism of earlier women’s-rights advocates who spoke in the name of a unified, homogeneous womankind. From that point on, the dominant motif …
