Professor Berman’s earlier A Reader’s Guide to Shakespeare’s Plays may have been helpful. I wouldn’t know. His present guide to the intellectual life of the sixties, however, is not of much use. Both title and subtitle are misleading. This is not …
Phil came to Boston in the midsummer of 1935. He was the district organizer of the Communist party. His arrival was fortuitous. It coincided with the meeting of the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern and the emergence of a new …
The students for a Democratic Society held its annual convention June 9-15 at Michigan State University, and delegates witnessed some dramatic new developments without precedent in the history of the organization. “Old-timers” who held out so much hope for the …
It all began in Nanterre. Those who were surprised by the events of May 1968 would do well to visit the spot where the conflagration broke out. There, between a shantytown perched on a low plateau and low-cost housing developments, …
Is mass culture an abomination, a harmless anodyne, or a blessing? These are the real, if often merely implicit, questions in an interminable and ferocious debate.
Perhaps the most significant thing to be said about the May 1968 convention of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was its revived spirit and liveliness, particularly impressive to one who had witnessed the factional bickering of the previous year’s convention. …
Although American basic science has been spectacularly successful, and its rate of discovery shows no sign of slackening, it would not be hard to conclude that American science policy is in crisis. Immense sums of money have been wasted on …
We do not know why the United States has been subject in the last few years to a wave of political assassinations. Nor do we think anyone else knows. There is the conspiracy theory, convenient for those who like their …
After a while, a long while, there was hardly any distinction attached to a subpoena summoning a witness to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In my case, as in many others, the summons confirmed what the author of this …
Schisms within the trade unions reflect the fragmentation of American politics. Sooner or later policy differences, personal ambitions, and personality antagonisms were bound to set George Meany and Walter Reuther on a collision course. Working within the framework of an …
The problem of conscientious objection to particular wars agitates thoughtful Americans as never before. In its report to the President, the National Advisory Commission on Selective Service unanimously sustained the present system of granting exemptions to absolute pacifists, but by …
The San Francisco Chronicle story two days after the Oregon primary was entitled “How McCarthy `Caught Fire’ in Oregon” (through his sharp attacks on Bobby Kennedy, it conjectured). Next to this report, another headline read, “Humphrey Enjoys Oregon—and Counts Delegates.” …
The realities of the Vietnam War, long disregarded by Washington, are at last beginning to assert themselves. That the other side —the NLF and Hanoi—could not achieve a military victory has long been clear. The surprising strength displayed by the enemy …
In mass society, problems related to plagiarism and authorship can take on bizarre characteristics. Where large-scale organizations prevail, the head man is presumed to be too busy, too engaged, and too important to write his own speeches, policy papers, books, …
Though Francophilia remains common among American intellectuals, few are at ease with the intricacies of French intellectual life. We enjoy the clarity, logic, and verve of contemporary writing in France, but much of it remains obscure to us because we …
