Mitchell Cohen’s essay “Why I’m Still ‘Left’ ” (Dissent, Spring 1997) presents a strong argument for the continuing relevance of a “left” political identity. Cohen addresses the widespread sense that “left” politics has become outmoded, a sense given powerful expression …
Underworld by Don DeLillo Scribner, 1997 827 pp $27.50 Underworld has the makings of a masterpiece. It’s a novel of the historical imagination on a vast scale, with uncompromising perceptual rigor. On the level of the sentence, it pulls off …
The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century by Michael Denning Verso, 1996 556 pp $25, cloth; $20, paper In 1950, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) published Yertle the Turtle. A brief summary of this illustrated story …
Many readers of Dissent may associate mass demonstrations in Washington with liberal or radical gatherings such as the 1963 civil rights march or later protests against U.S. intervention in Indochina and Central America. But political and cultural conservatives have an …
Why should college and university professors have job security, when so many other Americans are losing theirs? From U.S. News & World Report to the Los Angeles Times to the Washington Post, powerful voices are asking that question, and answering …
In a recent essay in Dissent (“The Real Costs of Education,” Spring 1996), Richard Rothstein provided an illuminating critique of the contention by many critics of the public schools that budgets have steadily risen over the past three decades while …
I am sorry that Richard Rothstein has chosen not to respond to my main points: that the public school system continues its “tracking” functions; that public high schools are typically authoritarian and alienating; that the vision of progressive education has …
Dissent begins the new year—and moves toward the new millennium—with a new look. It is our second “make-over” in forty-four years. We think it is fresh and attractive, and we hope our readers agree. In Dissent’s first issue, its founders …
The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., And the Fate of America’s Big Cities by Fred Siegel Free Press, 1997 260 pp $24 At several points in reading this book, I had the curious feeling that Fred Siegel …
This fall President Clinton made “fast-track” negotiating authority—whereby Congress must vote yes or no on trade agreements presented by the president, with no amendments allowed—his top legislative priority. The prospects for passage looked good. Every major newspaper supported it; the …
The traveler’s great temptation is to fix a place with a phrase and then be done with it. Sometimes, despite all the possibilities for error, a phrase does work: Florence lives in its stones, as Mary McCarthy saw; Paris remains …
I want to talk as a philosopher today—a practical and engaged philosopher. I won’t argue for particular policies, but I also won’t remain at the level of abstract principles. If philosophy is to engage with politics, it had better be …
The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age by E.P. Thompson The New Press, 1997 225 pp. $25 This posthumous collection of essays and reviews by E.P. Thompson makes a companion to the last book he completed, Witness against the Beast—a …
The Tiananmen massacre of June 4, 1989, set off extraordinarily deep reverberations within American public opinion and led to strange movements within American politics. Tom Brokaw recalls that while he was doing a story on Los Angeles street gangs, the …
Two years into the Sweeney era, the American labor movement seems to have found its own rather rocky rhythm: victory, disaster, victory, disaster. In late summer, the stunning success of the Teamsters strike at United Parcel Service was followed by …
