Books Briefly
Books Briefly MENCKEN'S LAST CAMPAIGN: H. L. MENCKEN ON THE 1948 ELECTION, edited with an introduction by Joseph C. Goulden (New Republic. 135 pp. $8.95). Mencken excelled at reporting political...
...Mencken excelled at reporting political activity as entertainment...
...she believes that the emphasis on lesbianism and violent rejection of men which have characterized many demonstrations have confused the public and deflected attention from such issues as child care, abortion, and job discrimination, issues which are of critical importance to millions of women...
...388 pp...
...2.50 paperback...
...Learn they did, and so will the book's readers...
...Alice Walker, a black poet, compassionately describes the ways in which Meridian makes her first small gestures of love and courage...
...A HISTORY OF BUILDING TYPES, by Nikolaus Pevsner (Princeton University Press...
...228 pp...
...37.50...
...Ernestine L. Rose, an abolitionist, feminist, and all-around radical...
...Anyone who is concerned with the issues of social possibility should reckon with what Gouldner has achieved...
...Her new book is a compilation of her writings since 1963 plus an autobiographical essay which traces her growth from a politically naive liberal to a poised and thoughtful leader for the women who want to be seriously involved in the women's movement without becoming committed to radicalism...
...Meridian, brilliant and sensitive, moves by instinct from small town to college to self-imposed poverty and pain as she teaches her neighbors to defend their dignity...
...One vice is the other side of the virtue of sweep: The book is at times glib and superficial, and it is hard going, often unnecessarily ponderous and repetitious...
...New materials such as reinforced concrete were used...
...14.95...
...All minority children have to search harder for heroes not found in traditional textbooks...
...This oversized (eight by eleven inches) potpourri, cleverly illustrated by Leona Walden, with many photographs by Sally Bailey, covers the "nuts and bolts" of building a feminist commune in the country, learning to cultivate the land and to raise poultry and animals...
...12.95 hard cover...
...It was full of adept and memorable phrases . . . and shined with wit and humor...
...It Changed My Life is a significant document...
...Illustrated...
...The main virtue of his book is its voracity: He has incorporated elements of linguistic theory, Marxism, and critical theory in a historical overview which is provocative even where it does not persuade...
...THE DIALECTIC OF IDEOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY, by Alvin W. Gouldner (Seabury Press...
...From 1904 on, he roared away every four years to national conventions...
...6.95 paperback...
...Disdaining pretentiousness and delusions of high-mindedness, Mencken worked from the premise that any elected candidate would do grave harm to common sense and, possibly, to the country...
...The biographies vividly demonstrate that fervor for early American ideals was not solely in the domain of blind patriots...
...Her appraisal of Bella Abzug, Gloria Stein-em, and others reflects her bitter feelings of betrayal by what she considers political manipulation...
...Gould-ner's range and audacity are startling in a sociologist...
...Finally a strong opposition arose, led by such men as Otto Wagner, Louis H. Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright, and their principle, "Form follows function," gradually triumphed...
...Interspersed with the "how to" reports on land sites, water systems, plumbing, carpentry, roofing, planting, harvesting, and animal care are poems and personal vignettes of women searching for new selves...
...REBELS AND REFORMERS, by Alberta Eiseman (Anchor Press...
...A scholarly, well-documented book, written by one of Hitler's best gifts to England...
...A beautifully written, anguished book, Meridian helps us to keep alive memories of that dramatic period...
...IT CHANGED MY LIFE: WRITINGS ON THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT, by Betty Friedan (Random House...
...4.95 hard cover...
...Mencken was in a carnival mood...
...Government buildings became important, as well as museums, hotels, apartment houses, and railroad stations...
...Unlike most grand theorists in the Marxist tradition, he is willing to look at technology and technologists as historical factors of weight in their own right...
...304 pp...
...Their lives illumine a crusading heritage for all Americans to cherish...
...Louis D. Brandeis, a crusading lawyer, early Zionist, and the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, and Lillian Wald, best known as the founder of the Henry Street Settlement but also a militant feminist, socialist, and pacifist...
...381 pp...
...One of the most fundamental facts of country life," note the writers, "is that one is always learning...
...COUNTRY WOMEN: A HANDBOOK FOR THE NEW FARMER, by Sherry Thomas and Jeanne Tetrault (Anchor Press...
...The last series of articles he wrote for his paper, the Baltimore Sun, dealt with the 1948 campaign, in which the Republicans nominated Thomas E. Dewey ("an incompetent rabble-rouser"), the Democrats Harry Truman ("a shallow fellow"), the Socialists Norman Thomas, and the newly launched Progressive Party Henry Wallace...
...Chronologically, the text reaches from the Baroque world of the Seventeenth Century to Moshe Safdie's "Habitat" experiment at Montreal's World's Fair in 1967, but the emphasis is on developments in Europe and the United States during the last century...
...Timidly, then with growing strength, she becomes convinced of the need for voter registration, demonstrations, and the open statement of human rights...
...One major theme is her reluctant disillusionment with the radical wing of the movement...
...Yet for many decades "historicism," with its exaggerated veneration of the past, prevailed...
...If, at one time, churches and castles were the most interesting buildings, that situation changed with the Industrial Revolution...
...Rebels and Reformers, written for sixth graders but pertinent for any age, contains brief biographies of four Jewish activists...
...The civil rights movement of the 1960s is the subject of this poetic novel about one black Southern girl's tormented struggle to improve the lives of those near her...
...MERIDIAN, by Alice Walker (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich...
...The four Jewish activists here are Uriah P. Levy, the first high-ranking Jewish naval officer, who used his position to help democratize the armed forces...
...By his own account a "Marxist outlaw," half sociologist and half Marxist, and critical of both roles, he attempts to organize nothing less than a historical theory of modern ideologies, in which intellectuals and mass media loom...
...those ideals provided the impetus for creative and courageous responses to American injustice...
...This large, lavishly illustrated volume is based on the Mellon lectures which Pevsner delivered at Washington's National Gallery of Art in 1970...
...But the task of constructing a radical social theory which sacrifices neither freedom to equality nor equality to freedom is an important and neglected one...
...128 pp...
...Wallace, he wrote, had acquired such a "semi-celestial character" that "when he is nominated and suddenly sprouts wings and begins flapping about the hall, no one will be surprised...
...Mencken, the Tory, praised only the Socialist candidate, Norman Thomas, whose speech in Baltimore lasted an hour "but seemed far shorter than an ordinary speech of twenty minutes...
...If you read Betty Friedan's first book, The Feminine Mystique, the chances are that it changed your viewpoint on the budding feminist movement...
...352 pp...
...A deftly edited record of a diverting journalistic romp...
...7.95...
Vol. 40 • October 1976 • No. 10
