Violence for Fun and Profit  

I wonder how we incorporate the images we receive through the media. Do we take them as fact, believe what we see? Or if not, how do we use what we don’t literally believe? The question is raised in new …





Nuclear Civil War  

The land around the Fernald uranium processing plant in southwestern Ohio is rich enough to grow most anything. But for the plant’s neighbors the standing joke is that pumpkins are the crop to raise: “They don’t need a candle at …





Some Truth About Our Economy  

Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980 was in part the result of Jimmy Carter’s failure to respond to high unemployment and inflation. Carter’s austerity program (in 1979, when millions of people were without work, Carter proposed a $25 billion cut in …



Deconstructing History  

One good reason to read this book is that it directly addresses the current right-wing attack on university attempts to modernize their course offerings. As the New York Times reported on November 22, 1988, that attack is spearheaded by complaints …



Joseph Clark  

You might say that my first encounter with Joe Clark was not entirely friendly. He was speaking at a Communist rally in the Bronx, and several young Socialists, I among them, went with the intention of heckling. We tried, but …



Morning in Privatopia  

From Plato’s Republic to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia to B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two and beyond, many social theorists have tried to design, even to build, an ideal human community. It is a prospect that many view with ambivalence. As …