Political Book Notes
Political Book Notes Public affair books to be published in December The American Police Statg: The Government Against the People. David Wise, Random House, $12.95. A skillfvl,...
...The strange world of the soaps is presented knowledgably and in detail, but the book is flaky more often than funny and not as sharp in its discussion as it could be...
...finding the story line in Watergate-related incidents that when reported j r i the daily papers were crushingly complex, boring, and devoid of human drama...
...Public Affairs Press, $6.50/$4.50...
...Founding Principles of American Govern· rn~nt: Two Hundred Years of Democracy on Trial...
...George J. Graham, Jr., Scarlet G. Graham...
...awry are the problems that have driven the town into its dark age...
...When Your Parents Grow Old...
...AmericaWatching...
...Jane Otten, Florence Shelley...
...and kids gon...
...One is “to residuate,” which is defined “to burrow into a fixed position while maintaining a low profile...
...eds...
...and about a third is new...
...Conversations with Eric Sevareid: Interviews with Notable Americans...
...The other is “to profundify,” which means “the use of thesauric and other enrichment techniques to make a simple idea to appear to be profound...
...Footholds:' Understanding the Shifting Family and Sexual Tensions in Our Culture...
...Its most interesting point is that the soaps aren’t ,trivial and superficial because they don’t deal with political issues and so forth...
...Boren also comes up with a new description of bureaucrats-as people who “make tentative approaches to preliminary plans for initiating feasibility studies on the possibilities of planning future study conferences on the subject of decision-making...
...Abqut a third of the material here is f a d i a r to anyone who’s read the papers for the last five years...
...Through the Walls: Prison Correspondence...
...His diary is meticulously detaded, engrossing really only to someone already very interested in the Eisenhower Administration...
...Secrets, Spies, and Scholars...
...Doubleday, $10...
...Stein and Day, $9.95 .. The authors' aim is to recount the history and mores of the' soap opera in a light aiid genenilly benevolent way, which is altogether applaudable...
...Columbia, $15...
...Funk and Wagnalls, $8.95...
...John J. Tarrant...
...Indiana, $17.50...
...Albert L. Weeks...
...Putnam, $8.95...
...Rounds...
...The Politics of Attraction: Four Middle Powers and the United States...
...of Women in Five Western European Societies...
...Philip Slater...
...This kind of mix grates on one’s sensibilities a bit-one is altematively interested in the new and bored by the farmliar-but on the whole the book is consistently interesting and informative...
...The End of Exurbia: Who Are All Those People and Why Do They Want to Ruin Our Town...
...It’s interesting how few of the burning issues in the diary are matters of any concern or debate whatever today...
...Harvard, $15...
...A skillfvl, professionally done complilation of the many and vaned civil liberties abuses of the American government, chiefly during the Nixon era...
...A Scientist at the White House...
...Nowadays not many people know who the President’s advisor on science is, but in the late fifties technology was developing fast (for both weapons and satellites) and the government was fascinated, almost obsessively concerned, by it, so George Kistiakowsky, a Harvard professor, occupied a significant post...
...The Bureaucratic Zoo: The Search For the Ultimate Mumble...
...about a third is elaboration and embellishment of things barely remembered, because they were first revealed amid such a flood of material...
...Stemmer House, $8.95...
...George B. Kistiakowskjl...
...Champions of Peace...
...alCohol· i,sm, raciSm, executive unemployment, reo strictive z<;ming...
...There's a fascination to any story like this-a golden, hopeful dream falling irito ruin in 30 years-but Tarrant's indict· ment of suburbiais pretty familiar, and it's hard to get as worked up about Westport in particular as he does...
...on the contrary, they are more profound t h q politics because they traffic in the eternal human themes of love, passion, rejection, jealousy, joy, and pain...
...Ashley, $7.95...
...George Bernard...
...Peace Press, $12.95/$5.25...
...Stein and Day, $10...
...Which is not to say that all the things Wise describes aren’t genuinely horrifying and bad, because they are, and the book is very convincing on that scare...
...10...
...Columbia, $20/$6.95...
...Residuation is a survival practice often used during changes of administration...
...Gerald W. Johnson, intro...
...North American International (Washington, D.C...
...Kistiakowsky comes across as a man of considerable integrity, slightly removed from the political fray but by no means lacking interest in it...
...Eric Sevareid...
...Dutton...
...He’s concerned mostly with Westport, Connecticut, where he lives, and its blindness and decay...
...New York Univ., $10...
...Annette Baker Fox...
...The Troubled Detente...
...From...
...lbe Female Factor: A Study...
...The Natural Superiority of Southern Politicians David Leon Chandler...
...Shari Steiner...
...David J. Muchow...
...The Vanishing Congress: Where Has All the Power Gone...
...Seven years ago the author wrote a reasonably perceptive book called The Pursuit of Loneliness...
...Wise is a first-rate researcher and has an instinct fo...
...Mary .Noble to Mary Hartman: The COmplete Soap Opera Book...
...Henry Steele Commager...
...Sure Fail: The Art of Mismanagement...
...Steven F. Lawson...
...Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 19441969...
...James Boren...
...Inside the National Enquirer: Confessions of An Undercover Reporter...
...Exburia-like suburbia, only richer-is dying, and Tarrant spends this book ruminating disconnectedly about that...
...From the man who created such magnificent bureaucratic phrases as “dynamic inaction” and “the creative status quo” and the great bureaucratic motto “When in charge ponder, when in trouble delegate, when in doubt mumble,” comes two new verbs...
...EPM, $6.95...
...we certainly don't u!led any more pompous, scholarly denun· ciations of the genre...
...Raymond Dreyfack, Morrow, $6.95...
...Two Continents, $10.95...
...Since then, he has gone downhill, a trend continued by this collection of excerpts from his articles and reSea~ch papers...
...Tony Gray...
...Ethel Shapiro-Bertolini, Andrew Richter...
...The picture of America (and of human motivation) the book presents is not overwhelming for its subtlety, and is reminiscent of the SDS’s good-guys-and-bad-guys “Amerika,” made respectable...
...The best material is on various buggings, and on the frame-up of an innocent girl accused of bombing the Capitol...
...Ray S. Cline, Acropolis, $10...
...The allure of soppy cuteness was just too mbch for the authors to resist, alas, so the book has to go down as a noble failure...
...Madeleine ~mondson, David...
Vol. 8 • December 1976 • No. 10
