Remember candidate Ronald Reagan’s promise to “get the government off the backs of the great American people”? It was one of his most effective rhetorical thrusts in the 1980 television debates with Jimmy Carter. Spokespeople for the Administration have flourished …
Simply by choosing to write a biography of Josephine Herbst, an almost forgotten American writer (1892-1969), Elinor Langer demonstrates both courage and an eye for an unconventional subject. Women who lead “lesser lives” are not sure bets for full-length biographies. …
Emil Dorian, a Romanian Jew, was born in 1893. As his parents were unable to pay the tuition that the public schools required of “foreigners,” he received his early education in Yiddish classrooms. Yet by the age of 18 he …
From ancient Greece on down, a recurrent male fantasy, born of envy and the desire to control, has been to eliminate women from the reproductive process altogether. Recently, rejecting the idea that biology is destiny, some feminist thinkers have also …
BAGHDAD — Development has become a sacred cow in Iraq. Despite an agonizing war now in its fifth year, costing an estimated $1 billion per month, vast public-works projects are under way. Using imported labor and imported technology, Iraq is …
BAGHDAD — Development has become a sacred cow in Iraq. Despite an agonizing war now in its fifth year, costing an estimated $1 billion per month, vast public-works projects are under way. Using imported labor and imported technology, Iraq is …
The British New Left—at least in its first stage, from 1956 to the early 1960s—did not so much break with the old left as move beyond it. The smoothness of this transition, in contrast to the American experience, is most …
There is a tremendous appeal to Menachem Brinker’s thesis that Zionism is finished [“The End of Zionism?,” Dissent, Winter 1985]. His declaration that the Jewish people are being normalized, ingathered into their own state while those who chose to assimilate …
It’s not a bad idea to remember that there are New Yorkers politically to the right of Ed Koch, a fact often obscured by the mayor’s own penchant for flailing his erstwhile liberal allies. Watching him savage Bella Abzug, you …
From ancient Greece on down, a recurrent male fantasy, born of envy and the desire to control, has been to eliminate women from the reproductive process altogether. Recently, rejecting the idea that biology is destiny, some feminist thinkers have also …
The Strategic Defense Initiative or “Star Wars” is dominating the national security debate. Star Wars is seen by some as “the most radical change in strategic policy since World War II” (Business Week, June 20, 1983), combining radically new technologies …
Millions of Mozart lovers have by now been exposed to Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, first on stage and now on screen. They have encountered an oafish, vulgar, and childlike Mozart. Indeed, it is God’s granting of unsurpassed musical genius to such …
LONDON — It was never just a strike, but a confrontation between two Britains: the Labour and union strongholds of the decaying industrial north and of the increasingly postindustrial south, which provided Mrs. Thatcher with her electoral majority. In symbolic …
When Teddy Kennedy was asked what he thought of the Democratic neoliberals, he is said to have responded: “We don’t need two Republican parties.” There is a good deal of substance to Kennedy’s quip. Many of the neoliberals, including two …
One night last October my father came home late from a meeting, talked with my mother for a few minutes in the living room, and went up to bed. She says he looked as beautiful as ever. When she came …
