POLITICAL BOOK NOTES
political book notes Public affairs books to be published in September. Acting Out: Coping with Big City Schools. Roland Betts. Little Brown, $8.95. The Adirondack Park: A Political...
...but in passing, he mordantly comments on the politics of 1952...
...Morrow, $8.95...
...Worlds Apart: Relationships Between Families and Schools...
...James Leiby...
...Gordon Tullock, Richard E. Wagner, eds...
...Kammen’s concern is with how the Revolution is perceived today, how it is depicted in popular culture...
...The million dollar lawyers are a shady bunch...
...Caroline House, $7.95...
...The fundamental crisis of capitalism, according to Heilbroner, remains the contradiction that Marx perceived more than a century ago-an ever-more-centralized economy, remaining under private control and without rational planning...
...The villain Christian and Turner indict is the Los Angeles Police Department, and here the fabric stretches thin...
...America For Sale...
...A History of Social Welfare and Social Work in the United States...
...Seth Kantor...
...If not, he and his friend have written a book to remind you-Phillips is the Princeton student who created such a splash a few years ago when he designed a plutonium fusion bomb as a class project, using material readily available in the Library of Congress...
...Now Rifkin and Randy Barber have hit upon another issue that may become, quite literally, a new source of capital for American radicals...
...At its best, the book touches on a multi-millidndollar litigation involving IBM and Telex, and allegations that a leak from the Supreme Court staff may have influenced the outcome...
...These works aye less important to Kammen for their artistic merit-many aredecidedly second-rate-than as reflections of what the public wants to see, read, and hear...
...Oxford, $19.95...
...Connaught Coyne Marshner...
...Unfortunately, this book is about the splash, not the bomb, as we watch our hero change from average physics student into media superstar, sex symbol, a n d c o m m e n t a t o r on his generation...
...The theory, which has been raised and contested in the ten years since the tragedy, is that Si r h a n was “ h y p n o p r o gr a m me d ” to assassinate Robert Kennedy and to block out of his memory all recollection of those who programmed him...
...Joseph C. Goulden...
...Policy Analysis and Deductive Reasoning...
...During Sirhan’s trial it emerged that he was, in fact, an easily hypnotizable subject and had probably been hypnotized many times in the past...
...political book notes Public affairs books to be published in September...
...Turner and Christian challenge the conclusion that the slaying of Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968 was simply the random, irrational act of a lone assassin named Sirhan Sirhan...
...Michael Kammen...
...Edward N. Peterson...
...But on the whole, Private Lives is gimmicky and lacking in authority...
...Karl Brunner, ed...
...Historical fiction, although frequently banal (featuring heroes and heroines with names like Silas Fearnought and Flora Goodheart) has been the most important source of public awareness of the Revolution...
...His attorney suggested that at the time ofthe killing Sirhanwasina trance-but a self-induced trance...
...The authors maintain that indeed there was more to it...
...Not that we all see it in the same light...
...Several events during the last decade shattered American dominance without creating a new dominant capitalist power to replace us as the kingpin of the world economy...
...Not too surprisingly, diplomats turn out to be better educated than meat inspectors...
...They’re the “Bombers,” a Fifth Avenue firm of divorce specialists for upper-crust New Yorkers who’ll resort to any “legal high explosives available to help a client with a case...
...With the initiation of the Arab oil embargo in 1973, 25 years of almost unbroken economic expansion came to a halt in North America and Western Europe...
...Indisputably this is the workers’ own money d e f e r r e d compensation set aside to pay for the workers’ retirement security...
...Atkins, co-author of the best-selling fie Fire Came By, is primarily telling a mystery...
...Germany: 1866-1945...
...It ismarred only-and far from fatally-by the author’s inability to flesh out Kennedy’s faults nearly as fully as he portrays his virtues...
...Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $8.95...
...Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr...
...Richard L. Gordon...
...Harold Schiff...
...Kenneth C. Crowe...
...The Presidential Election Game...
...Jeremy Rifkin, Randy Barber...
...But in a country where the future is king, the past gets short shrift-with one exception: the American Revolution, its ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence, remains the core of such sense of national tradition as we have...
...Stable Peace...
...Coal in the U.S...
...Private Lives of Public Servants...
...Knopf, $12.95...
...Offenders in the Community...
...Reinhard Bendix...
...Doubleday, $10...
...the gradual transformation of the military into “soldiers without enemies,”such as the UN forces in the Middle East, Cyprus, and the Congo...
...John Christian, William Turner...
...the stock market shysters, the corporate and personal injury professionals, and the medical malpracticemoguls, all of whom will command six-figure fees without so much as batting an eyelash...
...Lexington, $13.50...
...R. Hal Mason, ed...
...Frank Graham...
...Norton, $6.95...
...Its many fine chapters include a brilliant account of RFKaseffectivedove duringthe Cuban Missilecrisis...
...Doubleday, $10...
...Occasionally the author is foolish, as in this observation: “No one who knew John and Robert Kennedy well believed they would conceivably countenance a program of assassination...
...The Blue Man...
...The First World and The Third World: Essays on the New International Economic Order...
...University of California, $20...
...Lexington, $18...
...Robert L. Heilbroner...
...Kenneth A. Shepsle...
...University of Rochester, $9.951 $3.95...
...Inflation and the Money Supply in the United States, 1956-1977...
...Some Kennedy weaknesses, such as thecuriouscelebrityitis he shared with sever31 other members of his family, are simply not mentioned at all...
...Echoing many younger radical economists, Heilbroner maintains that our economic system depends largely upon United States dominance over the world capitalist economy, if not the entire world economy...
...This is a truly important book about one of the truly fascinating men of our time...
...Jacob S. Dreyer, ed...
...Despite such excesses of zeal, 7he Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy is a major work of reportorial investigation and will rekindle thecontroversies involving the wave of political shootings in recent years...
...A staggering $400 billion in pension funds are managed primarily by the major banksand insurance companies...
...10.95...
...Random House, $10...
...Yale, $22...
...Modern Medical Mistakes...
...Starting out with a wildly implausible theory right out of The Manchurian Candidate, they proceed by a combination of hard digging and somenottoounreasonable speculation to chip away at the reader’s initial skepticism...
...The authors, for example, unable to obtain from any of several Dublic schools he has attended the photogiaph of a boy linked to Sirhan, darkly hint that the LAPD got there first and removed the photos...
...Robert L. Bailey with Anne L. Hafner...
...corporations to finance their current operations, and, despite the recent pension reform legislation, many workers arestillin danger of being denied the pension benefits they have paid for and waited for...
...The Adirondack Park: A Political History...
...Indiana University, $9.95...
...The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy...
...Viking, $10.95, Undesirable Alien...
...Blessed with the capacity to spot trends before they happen, Rifkin hascashed inon topical issues just before they’ve hit the front pages...
...Thomas R. Atkins...
...Wayne State, $1 8.95...
...Leonard Reed Beyond Boom and Crash...
...Wealth Redistribution and the IncomeTax Principal Paper, Norman B. Ture: Arleen A. Leibowitz, ed...
...One comes of age only once, and then it is a fait accompli, not a continuing process...
...Lexington, $16...
...Everything about lawyers seems to fascinate him-their huckstering, their bluffing, their stonewalling, and their highstakes courtroom strategies-the kind of stuff they never teach you in law school...
...Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr...
...Maurice Baumont...
...Janos Radvanyi...
...1968 saw not only the beginning of Americandefeat in Indochina, but also the first runon the Americandollar in the world money market...
...Lexington, $18...
...Goulden is a great storyteller...
...Janer Marinelli Minority Admissions...
...Putnam, $1 5. Delusion and Reality: Gambits, Hoaxes and Diplomatic One-Upmanship in Vietnam...
...Harry Lesser Blackboard Tyranny...
...The Giant Jigsaw Puzzle: Democratic Committee Assignments in the Modern House...
...and “a United Nations Spying Organization which would spy on everybody and publish the results immediately...
...Knopf, $15...
...Just as scandalously, the pension funds are frequently invested to finance the flight of industries from unionized communities into cheap labor sweatshops in the Sunbelt or slave labor sweatshops in South Korea, South Africa, and other outposts of the Free World...
...Remember John Aristotle Phillips...
...The Ozone War...
...Edwin M. Lemert, Forrest Dill...
...Indiana Universitv...
...He’s already written another book on the subject, The Superlawyers...
...Like McCone, they were Catholics...
...Boulding’s prescription is similar...
...The Million Dollar Lawyers...
...He is a poor man’s Vernon Parrington, tracing the currents of American thought about the Revolution as they emerge from paintings, statues, plays, poems, and romanticnovels...
...Jim Hougan...
...Lexington, $18...
...David J. Garrow...
...Breadth and Depth in Economics: Fritz Machlup-The Man and His Ideas...
...Peter I. Berman...
...Robert Kennedy and His Times...
...Columbia, $17.50...
...The North Will Rise Again: Pensions, Politics, and Power in the 1980’s...
...Svetozar Pejovich, ed...
...Richardson...
...and increasing social demands upon a stagnating economy...
...The Crime of World Power: Politics Without Government in the International System...
...Lexington, $18...
...University of Texas, $3.95...
...Lasson attempts a sympathetic portrayal of the frustrations of six government workers, ranging from a Department of Agriculture meat inspector to a Foreign Service Officer...
...The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice...
...Lexington, $12.95...
...One has only to scan popular literature such as Paul Erdman’s The Crash of ’79, the financial advice columns of New York magazine, or even serious business magazines such as Fortune, Forbes, and Business Week, to read economic predictions that make Karl Marx read like a copywriter for Mobil...
...But the pension funds are managed by the corporate-financial community to suit its own needs, under the guise ofearningthemaximum returnon the funds...
...Thomas Hauser...
...Kenneth E. Boulding...
...R. The Story of Thalidomide...
...Steven J. Brams...
...On The Take: From Petty Crooks to Presidents...
...R. Spooks: The Haunting of America-The Private Use of Secret Agents...
...Doubleday, $8.95 (fiction...
...Edward C. Lambert...
...Kenneth Lasson...
...Senator H.L...
...Kings or People: Power and the Mandateto Rule...
...More recently, he wrote one of the first books on human biogenetic engineering, Who Should Pia...
...Richard A. Aliano...
...Dona Baron...
...Regis Debray...
...Today’s American capitalist appears less than optimistic about the survival-much less the growth and prosperity-of our economic system...
...But don’t expect anything too deep...
...If you like reading about the behind-the-scenes machinations of hig h:level corporate counsel, then this book is for you...
...Lydia Dotto, Dr...
...Columbia, $ I 2.50...
...And Joseph Goulden is a self-professed “lawyer-freak,’’ a guy who’s been willing to spend several years of his life tracking them down, shaking their hands, takingthemout to lunch, and collecting their how-I-won anecdotes...
...The impending crisis ofcapitalism, longanarticleoffaith to all but the most revisionist socialists, has become a familiar theme in the popular culture of capitalism...
...The Public Accounting Profession: Problems and Prospects...
...Over the horizon, Heilbroner sees more of the same-rising prices for raw materials...
...Tradition, tradition!-the connective tissue which gives a community its sense of identity and continuity...
...Eisenhower, according to an apocryphal story, once admonished Dulles, “Don’t just do something, stand there...
...Gateway, $10.95...
...What Makes You Think We ReadtheBills...
...Beacon Press, $10.95/$4.95...
...Often the pension funds are raided by the The National Purpose Reconsidered...
...The persistent thread in historical novels (and in the films made from them) has been the portrayal of the Revolution as a rite of passage, a national coming of age, sometimes symbolized by the young hero rebelling against his father and striking out on his own...
...William J. Chambliss...
...In fact, the “private 1ives”aspect concerns the background from which each of them emerged...
...The voluminous paintings of the signing of the Declaration and of George Washington doing anything, but mostly crossing the Delaware (including at least one in which he is crossing on horseback) suggest a certain ambiguity in how the public identifies with the Revolution-on the one hand an allegiance to democracy and egalitarianism, and on the other a near reverence for qualities of nobility and elite leadership...
...There has to be more to it,:’ Ted Kennedy said to Sander Vanocur on the flight carrying RFK’s body back to New York...
...For different reasons, neither the defense nor the prosecution wanted the idea of conspiracy introduced: the prosecution had its man and didn’t want the waters muddied...
...Everest House, $10.95...
...It strains the c r e d u l i t y , t o o , t o be offered the hypnoprogramming thesis and the claim that the shots that killed RFK were fired by someone other than Sirhan...
...Indiana University, $10.95...
...And his eponymous killer is chillingly different from the usual might-have-been hit-man...
...Gordon A. Craig...
...Mushroom: The Story of the A-Bomb Kid...
...soaring inflation...
...and the Voting Rights Act of 1965...
...John A. Phillips, David Michaelis...
...Although he manages to shake a finger at unconscionable lawyers when the opportunity arises, Goulden gets so carried away by the wining, the dining and the telling that heends up being seduced by the supershysters himself...
...Lexington, $18...
...He does convey a sense of how, faced with the inertia or corruption of government agencies, some workers keep faith (a doctor’s battle within the Food and Drug Administration is the bright spot of the book) while others become resigned to the hopelessness of it all...
...University of Chicago, $30...
...In this brief (1 12 pages) tract, Robert Heilbroner argues that “another crisis of capitalism is upon us”and predicts that this latest crisis may be the last...
...A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination...
...Energy Market: History and Prospects...
...The Codetermination Movement in the West: Labor Participation in the Management of Business Firms...
...and for the defense, evidence of conspiracy would demolish the case for Sirhan having been temporarily off his rocker...
...Lexington, $17...
...The author has left out, in his own words, any “ersatz political philosophy...
...The Insight Team of the Sunday Times of London...
...Kammen’s lament is that by treating the Revolution as a rite of passage we have derevolutionized it...
...The Origins of the Second World War...
...Rifkin launched the People’s Bicentennial Commission, now the People’s Business Commission, in 1972...
...At the very least, Heilbroner predicts, the next economic crisis will trigger the evolution of the American economy from a simple welfare state into a centrally planned economy...
...Viking, $9.95...
...Sara Lawrence Lightfoot...
...International Business in the Pacific Basin...
...The American Occupation of Germany: Retreat to Victory...
...Jeremy Rifkin is a hustlerand what’s wrong with being a hustler...
...Who Was Jack Ruby...
...Yale, $15/$3.95...
...the establishment of a United Nations Disarmament Organization (as a nabob of negativism, Boulding delights in the acronym UNDO) to provide a forum and impetus for real disarmament negotiations...
...Stanley Charles Abraham...
...Although this police procedural features a plot to kill Ike during the 1952 campaign, it should not be lumped with the Day-of-the-Jackal genre...
...Houghton Mifflin, $19.95...
...Basic, $12.95...
...Arlington House, $1 1.95...
...In any unproven charge of conspiracy, a coverup is an essential part of the scenario...
...Putnam, $10.95...
...Yale, $15...
...shortages of food, fuel, and minerals...
...With the limited objective of reducing the strains that lead to war, he proposes among other things: the removal of national boundary questions from the political agenda except under circumstances of strong mutual agreement (even in Africa, where boundaries are artificial, any international attempt to reset them would cause chaos...
...Morrow, $12.95...
...Lexington, $18...
Vol. 10 • September 1978 • No. 6
