Steven P. Erie’s Rainbow’s End is a major study of Irish-American political organizations in eight cities. Although the focus of Erie’s book is on the forces behind the successes and failures of such powerful figures as Richard Daley, James Michael …
Julius Lester is one of the tiny number of blacks to convert to Judaism, thereby placing himself in double jeopardy. Lovesong, the autobiographical tale of Lester’s journey from minister’s son to Jewish convert, shows him beset by prejudice and misunderstanding …
The voices of labor have always expressed caution at the introduction of new technology in the workplace. Some have been muted responses from those willing to wait and see. Others have been loud and organized cries against known or feared …
Every socialist knows how to fantasize; it comes with the territory. Even reading the newspaper becomes an exercise in imagining what should be rather than what is. But who develops the capacity to fantasize and who doesn’t? What—beyond genes and …
Something of major importance happened in the recent presidential election, though it has its roots, of course, farther back in time. We are living through the degradation of democratic politics. The procedures of democracy remain intact, perhaps even improved, but …
“Buddy once said something reasonably sensible to me a couple of years ago,” he said. “If I can remember what it was.” He hesitated. And Franny, though still busy with her Kleenex, looked over at him. When Zooey appeared to …
American unions have been generally more interested in pension benefits than pension funds. The employer-pension system originated in the late 1880s as a management device to ensure worker loyalty to the firm. Most pensions weren’t portable (and still aren’t); the …
This timely book deals with events that seem to be receding into a distant past. But it was as recently as the sixties that Junius Irving Scales, once a leader of the Communist party (CP), served in Lewisburg penitentiary for …
On my third day in Manila I saw a woman weeding her temporary patch of the park along the bay. One wall of her house, a squatter’s plastic-sacking and drift-plywood hovel, consisted of a hand-painted sign. It said, “10-PESO ACROSS …
This is the year of the Tory tickets. All four of the men selected to run are the sons of millionaires. The fathers of three of the four were millionaires many times over. They are being generously supported by their …
The following discussion, taped in the spring of 1988, was held between Menachem Brinker, an Israeli writer and activist in the peace camp, and Dissent editors Mitchell Cohen and Irving Howe. Dissent: Twenty-one years after the 1967 war and the …
I have been living in Budapest for decades now, but I wouldn’t dare to say that I know the city. Everyone there seems to know something that I don’t. Simply looking at other people is enough to make me feel …
The decline of the Republican right and the renewed interest in major social legislation compels us to ask a crucial question: Can the welfare state fulfill its promise without a strong ethical core? In Western Europe that ethical core was …
This academic year, the New York Times Magazine observed the end of spring term with an article (“The Battle of the Books,” June 5) on the current anticanonical fashion in teaching literature. The Magazine has taken a noticeable interest in …
The French Fifth Republic is thirty years old. Its founder and first president, Charles de Gaulle, designed its constitution to achieve two overriding goals: to secure political stability by concentrating power in the hands of a strong presidency, and to …
