One supposes that when raw nerves are exposed there will be some sort of reaction. All too often such reactions are like the flailing of arms by a patient in a dentist’s chair. Mr. Simon behaves like the patient. Mr. …
In the 1930’s, when it became unwise—even dangerous—for Soviet historians to concern themselves with Russian revolutionary history, the custodianship of this profession passed to a dwindling group of emigres. The greatest representative of the exiled historiography is Boris I. Nicolaevsky …
On March 18, 1966, an Ad Hoc Commission on the Rights of Soviet Jews held a full day of hearings at which a series of expert academics and eyewitnesses testified. The Commission was chaired by Bayard Rustin and the other …
Since liberalism has a long agenda of needed action, it is crucial that we put the important items first, and not be diverted by imaginary bogiemen. Criers of alarm— notable among them Don Michael, Mary Alice Hilton, Robert Heilbroner, and …
The modern world is full of things which, contrary to what we tend to think, have never been seen before today. It does not seem, for example, that the ancient world knew the disconcerting and, in some ways, terrifying phenomenon …
It is a pleasure to be commended by George P. Elliot,* whose style is quite as good when he praises as when he is finding fault. Elliot finds this fault in my Maratl Sade piece: I went too far, he …
Kafka’s recent entry into Russia has a history of its own. For several decades the visionary from Prague belonged—theoretically he still belongs—to the Unholy Trinity of Proust, Joyce, and Kafka. This Trinity has been condemned in Russia on every possible …
The issue which has been raised by the students in asking that ranks should be withheld is one which is involved in a tangle with other issues. Among these are the issues of the rightness of student deferment altogether, the …
A Mother in History by Jean Stafford Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966, 121 pp., $3.95 Jean Stafford was sent to interview Mrs. Marguerite Oswald by McCall’s, the ladies’ magazine. Miss Stafford does not pretend to examine in detail the case …
Editors: I’m damned if I can reconstruct the reasoning that went into the editorial caveat preceding Laura Carper’s sensitive article in your last issue. Certainly not “controversy.” The piece in answer to Hannah Arendt (also an excellent article) has involved …
Tentacles of Power: The Story of Jimmy Hoffa by Clark R. Mollenhoff World, 415 pp., $6.50 Hoffa and the Teamsters: A Study of Union Power by Ralph C. James and Estelle Dinerstein James Van Nostrand, 430 pp., $6.95 Clark R. …
In The Political Economy of Slavery, Eugene Genovese has made an original contribution to our understanding of ante-bellum Southern history. His contribution lies not so much in the discovery of new facts as in placing familiar materials in a fresh …
Starting Out in the Thirties by Alfred Kazin Atlantic Monthly Press, 1965, 166 pp., $4.95 Having no intention of irony, I would say right off that the most impressive quality of Alfred Kazin’s memoir of his young intellectual manhood is …
Ward 7 by Valeriy Tarsis E.P. Dutton, 159 pp., $3.50 The chaos and bestiality, some of it under medical auspices, that characterized Nazi totalitarianism has been rather thoroughly documented. Having lost the war, Germany was exposed to the scrutiny of …
I take it for granted that in a modern society we are all implicated in moral responsibility for what the state of which we are citizens does or doesn’t do. Thus remediable urban blight, the neglect of retarded children, the …
