Political Book Notes
political book notes Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy. James C. Mohr. Oxford, $12.50. Above the Battle: War-Making in America from Appomattox to Versailles....
...Yet one reads the pages of this posthumous book with growing astonishment at the complexity of the man...
...Basic Books, $10...
...Vol...
...C. Herb Williams, Walt Neubrach...
...V of Children of Crisis...
...Lesley Hazleton...
...OWI believed in FDRs “Four Freedoms...
...And even in Germany itself, the underground dissemination of ‘‘illegal” information and anti-regime literature which continued until the end testifies to the fact that Goebbels’ “conquest of the masses” was never complete...
...George McGovern...
...A few years later, these two, their passionate idealism kept somewhat in check by the downtoearth midwestern liberalism of Elmer Davis, struggled to shape the role of propaganda in a wartime democracy, knowing only what they didn’t want: they wanted no part of the ruthless methods, however successful, of Joseph Goebbels (See 7’he War that Hitler Won, below...
...Peter Gay...
...Through epochs past,” he notes, “nature has used the killing of individuals in a selection that advanced life’s species, but no selection resulted from man’s atomizing of his cities or by the downwind fallout that ensued...
...And then as World War I1 approached, our love affair with Lindbergh ended...
...As it happened, FDR had decided to negotiate with the king...
...For some unofficial facts about the health care crisis, read the prodigious output of the Health Policy Advisory Center (Health PAC), 17 Murray St., New York, N.Y...
...Horizon, $8.95...
...The almost simultaneous publication of two excellent books that intelligently evaluate, respectively, American and German wartime propaganda is a happy coincidence...
...Press, $17.95...
...The schools could close for lack of heating fuel-but Goebbels kept open the movie theaters, potent centers of indoctrination...
...The book itself is a compelling documentation of an all-out assault on the mind of man...
...Nigger in the Window...
...Victor W. Sidel, Ruth Sidel...
...And it’s hard to disagree with Harris that, “a system that has to be forced to weigh the value of underarm spray deodorants against the possible destruction of the earth’s protective ozone layer, cannot be easily restructured in the interests of future survival...
...On Your Own: Patient-Controlled AItematives to the Mental Health System...
...Joseph Califano, a special committee of the American Medical Association, and just about everyone connected with the health care system have offered essentially the same recommendations as Dr...
...Leonard Reed Blue Jolts: True Stories from the Cuckoo’s Nest...
...Harper & Row, $8.95...
...Reckless competition ordained this ruinous course, but the monopoly that is replacing competition (Fortune’s 500 corporations account for two-thirds of the industrial sales of the entire country) is no solution...
...We think of history as the unfolding of political events, what prime ministers or kings decree, with here and there a nod to a great flood or earthquake...
...As conventional capital increases, biological capital declines...
...Oh, God,” playwright Robert Sherwood confided to his diary in 1938, as the Nazis swallowed Austria, “How I hope to live to see the day when those barbaric bastards get their punishment...
...Herzstein’s canvas is the protean campaign of saturation propaganda to which the German population was subjected by the warped genius of Dr...
...One morning, thinking to bolster her pride, I spoke of the German resistance movement which culminated in the nearly successful attempt of the generals to assassinate Hitler...
...Of Crimes and Rights: The Penal Code Viewed As a Bill of Rights...
...The ensuing rhubarb jolted the OW out of its ideological crusade and redirected its creative energies to the more limited goal of military victory...
...of California Press, $12.75...
...Israeli Women: The Reality Behind the Myth...
...VoZ...
...Knopf, $15.95...
...Even now, none of the explanations he offered quite clears the air...
...A Healthy State: An International Perspective on the Crisis in United States Medical Care...
...Said Elmer Davis wryly: “There is no temptation to hold back bad news when there is no bad news to hold back...
...But you'll find many sentences even more ponderous than this one on the nexttolast page: "These realities should suffice as a warning that, although health reforms under government aegis may prove constructive, there is little prospect that any reform, even one well designed and implemented, can meet the expectations of its proponents: to assure access for all, improve quality, contain costs, and establish a single level of care for all Americans...
...The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modem America...
...John H. Westerhoff 111...
...Between D-Day and V-E Day, more than three billion leaflets were dropped...
...Harper & Row, $10...
...The military didn’t immediately enthuse to such notions as using its planes to drop leaflets on the enemy (“I’m not here to write ’em letters,” said General Patton, “I’m here to kill the S.O.B.S...
...and knighted Shakespearean actors become TV pitchmen for credit cards and cameras, you will find it refreshing to reacquaint yourself with even a fallen hero of yesteryear...
...In its overseas operation-correspondents and the Voice of America-OW13 insistence on straight and prompt reporting ran afoul of the military’s reluctance to reveal losses, a conflict that gradually eased as the American fortunes improved...
...But whatever you taste in health policy, avoid The Limits of Health Reform...
...No consideration of future needs enters into our production other than the groundless assurance that technology will solve arising shortages...
...but as deserters carrying leaflets began arriving at Allied lines Army officers became believers...
...Simon 8c Schuster, $7.95...
...He was convinced that the V-1 rockets would turn the British working class against its government...
...They were traitors,” she said...
...For a simple primer on what's wrong with the medical establishment, read The Great American Medicine Show by Spencer Klaw (Viking, 1977...
...Humanitarian Politics: The International Committee of the Red Cross...
...Lynda Ann Ewen...
...Orlando Patterson...
...Radio programs were frequently interrupted by “special announcements” of victories...
...Princeton, $17.50...
...Johns Hopkins Univ...
...An ardent environmentalist, he brooded, too, that civil technology vied with the military in breaking down human health and the natural environment...
...Concurrently, through pollution of soil, water, and air, we are headed for ecological bankruptcy...
...AtlanticLittle, Brown...
...Frank Mankiewicz, Joel E. Swerdlow...
...New Republic Books, $8.95...
...In a day when former senators (“I’m jes an ole country lawyer...
...In “psychological warfare” closely coordinated with military operations, OWI made its greatest contribution...
...I began to realize that as one gains fame one loses life...
...Life meant more to me than fame...
...The Adoption Triangle: The Sealed Record Controversy...
...David P. Forsythe...
...The War that Hitler Won goes a long way toward explaining the confusion and ambiguity with which, decades after the debacle, many Germans regard that era...
...Samuel J. Barr, M.D., with Dan Abelow...
...Intuitively attuned to striking the most responsive chords in the German people, with their uniquely mystic traditions, Goebbels used the tools of propaganda with an assiduity born of fanatical dedication...
...Risking: How to Take Chances and Win...
...10007...
...Daniel J. Kevles...
...Understanding Human Nature...
...Louis de Rochemont was the film genius who compromised his individual vision with no one, who once worked 86 hours in the cutting room without sleep and drove his staff nearly as hard-and who made it all go...
...It Takes a Long Time to Become Young...
...All through the war Goebbels believed the West would compromise with Germany to form a united front against the Russians (As late as April 22, 1945, he excitedly reported to Hitler that the Allies were joining the Nazis to halt the Russians’ westward advance...
...Leonard Reed McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality and Education in Nineteenth-Century America...
...David Kusnet The Literary Politicians...
...Pantheon, $8.95...
...The first large-scale application of psychological warfare began when OWI personnel, under military command, participated in the landings in North Africa...
...Much of MOT’s dramatic re-enactment was, by today’s standards, phony: if de Rochemont wanted shots of a fishing boat in a storm, he hired people to rock the vessel by pulling on cables...
...15.00...
...Ronald Dellums' plan to channel all government health care funds through a . new National Health Care Service, consisting of publicity operated facilities and salaried staff (including doctors) and democratically controilled at the community level...
...The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower...
...Random House, $12.50...
...Eli Ginzberg...
...Arthur Sorosky, M.D., et al...
...Its domestic operation was an early casualty, a victim of the American public’s reluctance to be propagandized, however genteely, by its government...
...Oxford, $14.95...
...The announcements were preceded by a blast of trumpets and heroic music and were concluded with a stirring marching song...
...Atheneum, $9.95...
...Oxford, $17195...
...The Limits of Health Reform...
...The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 194245...
...15 Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse...
...It is neither...
...Times, $15...
...In his maiden book, Harris sets out to one-up Karl Marx and demolish capitalism...
...On the contrary, huge monopolies use their political power to thwart any restriction on their exploitation of resources...
...The March of Time, as radio program and film newsreel dealt in that kind of history: what American past the age of 30 doesn’t remember the “voice” sonorously proclaiming, “Time-marches on...
...His hatred for war vibrates with fervor and the destructive power of aviation makes him question the value of his labors in its development...
...Fascinated by the work of the French surgeon, Alexis Carrel (also, alas, of suspect political leanings) in keeping disembodied organs alive, Lindbergh spent five years designing and perfecting an organ-perfusion apparatus, the design of which is still in use today...
...If you've read the literature of the health crisis, it says nothiung- and if you are new to the subject, this book will put you to sleep...
...David Caute...
...The March of Time: 1935-1951...
...Leonard Reed Dust of Life...
...Somewhere within this study, the reader finds references to the Medicaid mills, the $200,OOO-a-year "specialists," the inner city neighborhoods without physicians, Bernard Bergman's nursing homes, and other outposts of the health care industry...
...He experimented with lowering the body temperatures of mice, guinea pigs-and himself-as he pondered whether some day we would freeze people to extend their longevity for intergalactic travel...
...Pro-British, anti-fascist and interventionist long before America entered World War 11, MOT provoked controversy and congressional investigation, but stood its ground and played a seminal role in the use of photo journalism as an influence on public opinion...
...Unlike its American counterpart (The Office of War Information despaired as Hollywood trivialized the war with films like Blondie for Victory and Air Raid Wardens), the German propaganda machine controlled every instrument capable of molding opinion...
...Fielding has written a fine obituary...
...Pantheon, $10.95...
...Propaganda,” said Goebbels, “has but one goal . . . the conquest of the masses...
...Douglas Yates...
...Raymond Fielding...
...At about the same time, poet Archibald MacLeish was defining fascism as “a revolt of stunted, half-formed, darkened men against the human world of reason and intelligence and sense...
...The man had class...
...Grassroots...
...Univ...
...Norton, $12.50...
...Hunters, Seamen and Entrepreneurs: The Tuna Seinermen of San Diego...
...Barbara J. Berg...
...When I was living in Munich during the early sixties, I had a daily conversation with my German tutor, Frau Kuhne, a woman who frequently expressed the repugnance she felt for Hitler and all he had stood for...
...Thomas C. Leonard...
...Corporate Power and Urban Crisis in Detroit...
...Arnold J. Mandell, M.D...
...Before reaching the conclusion that reform is virtually impOSSible, Dr...
...From its inception, the Office of War Information had problems...
...Stein and Day, $15...
...The rush of events can be influenced only marginally by the rush of words...
...Simon & Schuster, $12.95...
...MacKlin Fleming...
...Anne W. Simon...
...Schocken, $9.95...
...Robert Coles...
...Here is an essay about the health care crisis, written with the passion and poetry of an internal memo from a state department of motor vehicles...
...Doybleday, $6.95...
...James K. Feibleman...
...Harvard, $1 5. Coming of Middle Age: A Journey...
...Lindbergh’s aversion to acclaim was palpable: “I found it difficult to work and think in the spotlight of newspaper publicity...
...at a time when, believe it or not, newsreel footage of Hitler was virtually non-existent in America because film-makers eschewed controversy, MOT came up with a celebrated shot of the dictator staring moodily into a fireplaceeven though de Rochemont had to hire an actor for the impersonation...
...FDR believed in them, sort of, but not for places like India where they might incite the Indians against the British...
...Eskimos, Chicanos, Indians...
...Oxford, $12.95...
...When an illustrated weekly published a picture of the recording which contained the fanfare Goebbels was furious-he wanted the radio listener to envision the trumpets and marching armies, not a wax disc-and threatened the editor with concentration camp...
...Talk about tilting at windmills...
...or the chilling, “This week, as it must to all men, death came to . . . . ?” But the stooly of the March of Time is history of a different kind, a quintessential atom of the energy and fabric of America...
...that certainly was not a war that Hitler won...
...The Last Cowboy...
...As the campaign moved inland, they took over newspaper plants, radio stations and movie theaters and used them all to erode the enemy’s will to resist...
...Dutton, $8.95...
...Freud, Jews and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modem Culture...
...The most serious conflict, however, was between the propagandists’ dedication to America’s proclaimed war goals and the compromises the political leaders had to make in the interest of shortening the war...
...Liz Thomas...
...Outdoor Empire Publishing, Inc., P.O...
...Oxford, $12.95...
...Robert Edwin Herzstein...
...Although the Germans had decreed the death penalty for possession of Allied materials, 40 per cent of the German prisoners in Normandy had leaflets with them when they surrendered...
...Oxford, $10...
...htnam...
...American Nightmare: Indian Treaties...
...Beatrice Marden Glickman, Nesha Bass Springer...
...So anaesthetic is Ginzberg's prose that, by the time I reached page 212, I was convinced that I'd read that sentence-or at least parts of it-several times earlier in the book...
...Doubleday, $10...
...Roy Doliner...
...Doubleday, $8.95...
...He was America’s last hero before the Great Depression first cracked our self-confidence...
...Simon & Schuster, $8.95...
...Propaganda is misunderstood equally by critics who regard it as impotent and proponents who see it as an irresistible force...
...Capitalism is devouring the earth’s natural resources at a suicidal rate: annually, for every man, woman, and child in the United States, we use up 1,200 pounds of iron and steel, 7,800 pounds of petroleum, 5,000 pounds of coal, 5,000 pounds of natural gas...
...In time, as in an aging bureaucracy, MOT’s vigor evaporated and in August, 1951, as it must to all institutions, death came, the demise hastened by unionization, the departure of de Rochemont, competition from television and the corporate timidity-also a fiber in America’s fabric-of Time, Inc...
...In 1943, a typical German civilian might awaken to radio propaganda, look at a calendar covered with the same slogans, have lunch after reading a menu covered with propagandistic phraseology, then board a train covered with posters and placards...
...Capitalism cannot be managed without regulation, but the regulatees have become the regulators, a sort of planning-in-reverse...
...His advocacy of American non-intervention, his admiration for the German Luftwaffe and his unfortunate affinity for people of the far right with whom these positions brought him into association became increasingly unpopular as passions mounted...
...The Ungovernable City...
...A Woman’s Choice: The New Dimensions in Abortion...
...Ginzberg...
...In crisis situations, however, that margin may be important, even decisive...
...Simon & Schuster, $9.95...
...The War That Hitler Won: The Most Infamous Propaganda Campaign in History...
...The Thin Edge: Coast and Man in Crisis...
...On the Edge...
...Viking, $8.95...
...IV of Children of Crisis...
...Ginzberg recommends stricter cost-controls by Blue Cross and the federal government, halting overbuilding by hospitals, and increasing the use of paramedics where physicians are used now...
...Mitchell S. Ross...
...While marred by a kind of sophomoric slogan-think, this is on the whole a thoughtprovoking book...
...Leonard Reed Privileged Ones: The Well-off and the Rich in America...
...He could easily turn down an offer of $50,000 to endorse a certain cigarette (He didn’t smoke-but he was offered a free pack so he could truthfully say he smoked that brand), and with only a twinge of regret, more than half a million dollars to star in a fim...
...Beyond his great contributioas to aviation-not only was he the founding father of transcontinental passenger service (and what became TWA), but it was he who arranged the financing of Robert Goddard’s rocketry experimentation, which opened the way to the jet and space age-he had an enormous interest in the mysteries of life itself...
...Broadcasting in the Third World: Promise and Performance...
...Doubleday, $7.95...
...Michael K. Orbach...
...The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective...
...Patrick V Murphy, Thomas Plate...
...Commissioner: A View From the Top of American Law Enforcement...
...Abingdon, $9.95...
...Hawthorn, $9.95...
...And so Harris offers his own scenario...
...Atlantic‘-Little, Brown, $1 5. The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism...
...With America at war, he fretted because he now had to spend his time on programs “to shorten life, not lengthen it...
...Marx’s scenarios for its (capitalism’s) downfall are unconvincing...
...Judi Chamberlin...
...An incident illustrates the thoroughness of Goebbels’ supervision...
...MIT, $15.00...
...But his knowledge of the German psyche was married to ignorance of the British and American character...
...Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $12.95...
...When he reached his destination, he might hear a loudspeaker blaring forth the Wehrmacht report of the day while he peered through store windows at display posters...
...Box C-19000, Seattle, WA 98109, $3.75...
...Helen Jackson Lee...
...Its title may be an overstatement...
...Stephen Harris...
...Leonard Reed Who Cares for the Baby...
...Summit, $7.95...
...Except for the blitzkrieg period, when the propaganda of German invincibility unnerved the weak of heart, there is little indication that German propaganda abroad was any match for the counterpart efforts of British and American propaganda...
...Yale University Press, $1 1.95...
...Carson Kanin...
...Just as real was his contempt for shoddy commercialism...
...Elihu Katz, George Wedell...
...Oxford, $14.95...
...Jane Kramer...
...The Slum pnd the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and MidYe-Class Reform, Chicago, 1880-1930...
...Autobiography of Values...
...For a way out of the health care mess, consider Rep...
...Remote Control: Television and the Manipulation of American Life...
...David Viscott, M.D...
...The Death of Capital...
...To my surprise, Frau Kuhne reacted with indignation...
...Charles A. Lindbergh...
...Robert Coles...
...Allan M. Winkler...
...nine days later, Hitler and Goebbels were dead...
...Thomas Lee Philpott...
...Walter La Feber...
...Charles Stair...
...Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda...
...His theories cannot comprehend the full complexity of capitalist decay...
...Lucky Lindy, the Lone Eagle-we loved him for his daring, for his modesty in the face of adulation few people have known, and we grieved with him and his wife at the murder of their kidnapped son...
...When Mussolini fell, the uncompromisingly anti-fascist OW spoke disparagingly of the military rightist Victor Emmanuel I11 replaced him with and broadcast an allusion to the monarch hiyself as “the moronic little king...
Vol. 9 • January 1978 • No. 11
