POLITICAL BOOKNOTES

POLITICAL BOOKNOTES Breaking With Moscow. Arkady N. Shevchenko. Knopf, $18.95. The Soviet government reeks of hypocrisy and corruption. Genuine malice fills the hearts of Kremlin leaders, who...

...That's too bad...
...Money and sex always draw a crowd," he muses...
...Norton, $18.95...
...Shevchenko sketches men who abhor dissent as a personal, as well as political threat...
...There is no Robert Moses around today, no one who can impose his vision of the city...
...Circumstances under which Kilby and especially Noyce worked were—guess what?— decentralized management, little bureaucracy, and freedom to pursue ideas which the marketing department said were hopeless...
...He argues that some lives are so miserable that the child would be better off dead, and he reveals the delusions we create to avoid making terrible choices...
...They are neglected and abused by adults over whom the rest of us exercise no control...
...Conciliatory overtures to the West, detente—all a ruse in a never-ending propaganda war...
...Thomas Larry Adcock...
...Lyon asks whether such evidence helps in the moments when parents must make life-and-death decisions...
...Arkady Shevchenko's memoir of a career in Kremlin corridors of power glides almost imperceptibly from one characterization of Soviet government to the other, and then back again...
...The resolution of the current transition crisis in the top Kremlin leadership may permit views such as Gromyko's to surface again, as they did in the early 1970s...
...Paul M Barrett Sex and Money: Behind the Scenes with the Big-Time Brokers...
...We meet cops like Ed Smith, a product of Vietnam and a broken marriage, who monitors the streets by living with the homeless...
...Beware...
...The highest-ranking Soviet diplomatic defector since World War H, Shevchenko served as a United Nations undersecretary general and as a top aide to Gromyko...
...Andrei Grechko, former defense minister, actively advocating a massive nuclear attack on China, "once and for all to get rid of the Chinese threat...
...Even in his own area of experience, real estate, Starr has little to offer...
...The same conditions have nurtured countless successful businesses, but still, years after In Search of Excellence, the MBA elite look the other way...
...David Hapgood Playing God in the Nursery...
...Courts declared the law unconstitutional, and the controversy boils on...
...In a more general sense, the city government has been paralyzed by the loss of central power...
...In this very funny, novelistic account of his own experiences, Spooner describes a bull market and a nation, fueled by "greed and fear," where the swindlers are outnumbered only by those eager to be taken...
...Her book offers many examples of history's throw-away children, stimulating an almost voyeuristic interest in cruelties past...
...They stalk and bust eight transvestite burglars as they break into a lingerie and fur shop...
...Lest we be smug, however, she also suggests that as a society and as individuals we remain ambivalent...
...Costs often exceed $100,000 for the first few weeks alone...
...Where to draw the line...
...Roger Starr...
...Jason DeParle...
...Paul Glastris Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children...
...This collection of vignettes about a police precinct in New York's Upper East Side is a fast-paced but somewhat superficial treatment of police life...
...John D. Spooner...
...In contrast to this major theme, Shevchenko presents something of a tribute to his former boss, Gromyko...
...But as so often happens, technical prowess has outpaced our ability to use it wisely...
...There's been plenty of discussion lately about today's "working children"—kids who come home to empty houses and lengthy lists ("put the dirty clothes in the washing machine and the frozen roast in the microwave...
...Detente-niks and "Evil Empire" adherents alike will agree with the author's reflections...
...Starr thinks we are worse off for his absence...
...Paul, spent a year tagging along with the men and women of the 19th precinct and calls them "the best in the world" At times he seems too admiring, and too reluctant to criticize...
...Tina Rosenberg Precinct 19...
...He is too busy fighting yesterday's battles to tell us his strategy for tomorrow...
...Perceived as hard-liners, pragmatists such as Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko actually took detente seriously...
...Prominent among the specific causes he lists is rent control, which is what you would expect from someone known as a pillar of the city's real estate establishment (and now a member of The New York Times editorial board...
...Think positive...
...Throughout America there is the smell of easy money...
...Though brittle with age and belligerent after a period of setbacks at home and abroad, the current ruling elite may soon give way to younger, more flexible leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev...
...Officer Tommy Kennan nearly loses his marriage to infidelity and alcoholism...
...Genuine malice fills the hearts of Kremlin leaders, who to a man seek international Soviet hegemony...
...More important, says Shevchenko, Gromyko has steadily lobbied against the absolute rejection of cooperative contact with Washington...
...During much of the 19th century, children were viewed as economic units...
...What do you do...
...Here Starr identifies his real villain: the city's ruling elite, who, he claims, did not impose on poor blacks the standards of acceptable behavior learned by previous immigrants...
...His discussion of the wrenching problem is compassionate, calm and brutally honest...
...A beautiful "mining engineer" stirs highballs with her finger while convincing brokers to buy stock in a dubious defense-related precious metals firm called "Doomsday Materials...
...Paranoia cements the Kremlin's hostile, aggressive stance abroad and cynical distortion of reality at home...
...Jeff Lyon...
...Only a few miles away from these precious, hothouse environments, other children lead lives of violence and poverty...
...There's a small amount of math, which, if you went to a "relevant" high school and took "Theology in Cinema" as an alternate to algebra, you can skip over...
...Adhering to the strict Leninist dogma that bourgeois governments uniformly serve monopoly capital, many Kremlin leaders, says Shevchenko, believe a secret national control center actually runs this country behind the facades of the White House and the Capitol...
...His cloak-and-dagger adventures as a reluctant spy— microfilm in the hollowed-out razor handle...
...A sociologist, Zelizer analyzes the "complex interaction between the market and human values...
...Too bad...
...the lifetime bill for institutionalizing a person with Down's syndrome may top $1.5 million...
...Lyon also profiles several parents who have, in essence, abandoned their own lives and those of healthy children to care for a handicapped child...
...These parents live in constant fear over who will care for the handicapped child after they die...
...The powerful, like the weak, seek security in orthodox doctrine...
...and all that—give rise to interesting reflections on the difficulty of betraying your homeland even when you vehemently oppose its entrenched power structure...
...Shameless options traders are finding it easy to fleece trendy investors who "care more about action than they do capital gains" One such trader calls it "selling cheap thrills to people cheated by the sexual revolution...
...Then they fish dead bodies from the river, smoking cigars to conquer the smell...
...Adcock's cops are called to perform a bewildering array of tasks...
...Another broker gets her best stock tips at orgies...
...This excellent book by one of The Washington Post's best and most productive reporters tells the stories of Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor, who, in the late 1950s, more or less simultaneously conceived the miniature integrated circuit, harbinger of the computer revolution...
...Houghton Mifflin, $15.95...
...The decision, Lyon argues, should rest with the parents...
...Your baby is two months premature, born with an open spine...
...The Japanese, Reid notes, had institutional problems of their own...
...Though Spooner generally avoids involving himself in the corruption that surrounds him, his many moments of temptation are charming and his seasoned observations arresting...
...Adcock, formerly a police reporter in Detroit and St...
...Gregg Easterbrook The Rise and Fall of New York City...
...Condemned to miserable living conditions and indescribably poor schools, such children must wonder indeed why they ever were born...
...When a child was killed by a wreckless automobile driver or a careless employer, the bereaved— assuming they went to court— could expect an award based on lost wages...
...An operation can keep him from dying, but for the rest of what could be a long life, he will be severely mentally retarded, a paraplegic, and in constant pain...
...We learn nothing about police training, police salaries, the politics in and around the police department...
...His pregnant mistress, an auxiliary cop, confronts him and his pregnant wife in an expensive restaurant wearing a sign reading, "I'm the other woman" The 179 officers of Precinct 19 monitor a neighborhood in which financial barons and dowagers walk the same streets as pistol-wielding junkies, transsexual prostitutes, and world-class con artists...
...Basic Books, $17.95...
...Simon & Schuster, $15.95...
...What went wrong...
...Working parents who worry about the loss of childhood pleasures can take some satisfaction from Viviana Zelizer's account of attitudes toward children back in the "good old days...
...They chase after the rapist who carved 26 crucifixes into the skin of a nun...
...He drives home the point that computers are literal minded and extremely stupid...
...There is also some insight into the business side of early chip manufacturing...
...Milking cows, delivering newspapers, and mowing lawns have long been exceptions to the hallowed child labor laws...
...On the evidence of this book, Roger Starr is not that person...
...Reid...
...How seldom the reaction to either is one of pure joy...
...In 1982, the Reagan administration created the "Baby Doe" regulation, which forced hospitals to take heroic measures to save every child, regardless of the parents' wishes, the cost, or the quality of life the child could look forward to...
...Spooner writes with a knowledge of market strategies and emotions that even the most empathetic journalist or novelist would have trouble matching...
...Doubleday, $19.95...
...But of course Lindsay has been out of office for more than a decade, and liberals are getting scarce, even on the West Side...
...Even if Shevchenko does little to clarify the best direction for American policy, his insights into the Kremlin mindset make for lively reading...
...It is, as I write, springtime in a Republican administration," writes Spooner, a stockbroker in the Boston office of Shearson Lehman/ American Express...
...He does preach to the city's elite: If New York is to have a future, the elite must find "the strength and will to impose discipline, or to insist that government impose discipline on those it means to help!' That's about it...
...Zelizer also argues that as a society, we are cruelly inconsistent...
...Most important, Lyon looks at the issue from the often-ignored point of view of the child...
...More and more parents face this terrifying choice because doctors can now "save" many handicapped babies who have died in the past...
...Lyon also exposes the hypocrisy of right-wingers who demand expensive, heroic operations to save handicapped babies but then vote to eliminate schools, shelters and health programs that could help the disabled lead more comfortable and meaningful lives...
...The durable foreign minister reminisces warmly about the days of Soviet-American cooperation in World War II...
...The horse Starr flogs may not be dead, but he surely hasn't won any races lately...
...Zelizer isn't atone in suspecting that some of the most well-adjusted children are those who make tangible contributions to the household...
...What's missing from this steady stream of adventure is deeper analysis...
...The total "loss" to the victim's parents came to $559.95, and that's what they were awarded...
...American hawks will nod with approval at Shevchenko's bleak Kremlin portraits: Yuri Andropov calmly supervising the brutal suppression of Hungary while he was ambassador to Budapest...
...Hovering in the background like clumsy secret agents are the Japanese, eager for ideas to swipe...
...film stars from the 1940s...
...After that, it was all downhill, and by 1975, the city was on the edge of bankruptcy...
...Nikita Khrushchev merrily manipulating disarmament negotiations as pure propaganda...
...Shevchenko flatters your foreign policy acumen—so much so that you begin to suspect he's playing a bit to his American audience's ego...
...Before coming in out of the cold in 1978, Shevchenko worked as a CIA spy for two-and-a-half years as part of the deal that got him asylum here...
...One example from a 1983 court case about an infant girl who literally had no brain: Right-tolifers brought in a couple to testify that the girl be kept on a ventilator because their own baby, who suffered from similar misfortune, could smile and respond to a stroke on the cheek...
...Viviana A. Zelizer...
...Ed Koch, like Ronald Reagan, has won reelection expounding values closer to Starr's than to those of his enemies...
...Roger Starr's answer to that question occupies most of this book...
...The problem is that there is an exaggerated quality to many of his scenes and characters that makes it too easy to dismiss his book as "just a story...
...Suffering from liberal guilt, the wealthy and professional classes have accepted welfare and crime as tolerable ways of life, fostering the growth of a dangerous, expensive underclass...
...That ultimately is the trouble with Starr's book...
...But should teenagers be expected to take grim, low-paying jobs in shopping malls and fast food outlets as a way to help keep the family above water...
...The financial markets today are probably a world in which the truth is even stranger than fiction...
...The constant presence of the KGB, monitoring the actions and thoughts of even the highest-ranking officials, conditions the Soviet elite to fear truth or association with those who speak it...
...Basic Books, $18.95...
...The deeper problem is that the blacks from the rural South who immigrated to the city from 1910 to 1950 have failed to make it into the main stream as did their predecessors from Europe...
...MITI, their trade-strategy bureaucracy— revered by proponents of industrial policy as a citadel of cosmic thinking—was predicting that no Americans would buy products with funny names like "Toyota" or "Honda," that there was no market for small sports cars...
...Or: Deeply embedded in the minds of some of the most powerful Soviet leaders is a sensible realization that even as adversaries, Moscow and Washington share a common interest in survival...
...and was telling Sony to sell cheap low-quality TVs, not prestige models...
...So urgent is his wrath that you would think those people were still running the city...
...Visit one of Washington's up-scale neighborhood parks, for example, and you will be bowled over by the proliferation of fawning parents and $100 Aprica strollers—truly, nothing is too good for the yuppie offspring...
...In 1946, New York City was on top of the world...
...t was only natural that the newly born United Nations should choose to make its home there...
...Reid provides a fair degree of detail on how chips work and how computers think, without ever descending into lingo...
...It's in their genes, from Lenin to Chernenko, and beyond...
...During one celebrated case, a jury deliberated for 53 hours over the worth of an eight-year-old boy, basing its calculations on a sliding scale of how much he had been costing per week in maintenance versus how much he had been earning...
...Adcock has written an interesting book, but he stopped short of making it a truly informative one...
...He loves American movies and proudly recites the names and biographies of U.S...
...Then they write traffic tickets...
...We want our children to be content and carefree, but it is increasingly expensive to raise them, and perhaps they should do more than sit there looking well fed...
...Lyon explores the taboo subject of paying for the care of the severely handicapped...
...New York, like the United States, could benefit from the opinions of an articulate conservative who can see past the next election...
...Deborah Baldwin The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution...
...In developing his argument, Starr attacks the left-leaning well-to-do who once clustered around John V. Lindsay...
...One of Spooner's colleagues seduces the divorced daughters of corporate CEOs to gain inside information on imminent mergers and acquisitions...
...Jeff Lyon, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, concludes that simply because we can save a handicapped baby does not mean we always should...
...Shevchenko underscores the point dramatically in describing Soviet leaders' refusal to acknowledge the degree of political freedom and economic well-being in the United States...

Vol. 17 • April 1985 • No. 3


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.