Features

Coalitions across the Class Divide: Lessons from the Labor, Peace, and Environmental Movements, by Fred Rose. Cornell University Press, 253 pages, $17.95. Taking History to Heart: The Power of the Past in Building Social Movements, by James Green. University of Massachusetts Press, 352 pages, $19.95. In May of 1970, hundreds of flag-waving New York City […]

Politicians Don’t Pander is one of those valuable books that force us to confront our compartmentalized thinking about politics. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, two prominent political scientists, point out that Americans simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs, each with firm conviction. One is that the growing influence of public-opinion polls has increased political […]

M y fourth-grade research project on dams lacked data from the field until I got a lucky break: An uncle had connections at the Conowingo Dam. (He was in the concrete business; Conowingo is 435,000 cubic yards of concrete.) We drove down U.S. 1 to the Susquehanna River in Maryland and took an official tour. […]

F or up-and-coming Hollywood directors, it’s a regular stop on the pay-your-respects express: a visit with Billy Wilder, the man generally considered to be the greatest living American film maker, the sardonic impresario who gave the world Some Like It Hot, Sunset Boulevard, and The Apartment. Cameron Crowe made the pilgrimage in 1995. He was […]

N ovelists delight in retailing life and times in the academy. Write about what you know, the adage goes, and many authors stay solvent by teaching their craft to the next generation of literary hopefuls. Besides, what transpires in the intellectual padded cells of institutions of higher learning provides ample fodder for stories told out […]

M illions of American women are now running, swimming, and climbing for breast cancer, raising extraordinary sums of money for charities whose workings they know almost nothing about. This odd throwback to the earliest breast cancer fundraising campaigns of the 1930s may go unnoticed because the outward appearances are so radically changed. But although spandex […]

The nation is awash in reforms and would-be reforms that promise to improve–or even transform–public schools. In Left Back, Diane Ravitch conveys a sober message: Schooling in the United States has suffered from “a century of failed school reforms.” Ravitch is an influential historian and herself a seasoned school reformer who served as assistant secretary […]

I n the world of television, imitation is not simply the sincerest form of flattery; it is among the most lucrative. That’s why network executives are doing everything they can to cash in on the reality TV fad. It’s also why the hottest new category of reality TV shows turns out to be that old […]

I n all probability, it was just a coincidence that in July the House of Representatives voted to repeal some of the more draconian aspects of the economic embargo against Cuba the day after PBS aired Buena Vista Social Club, Wim Wenders’s Oscar-nominated documentary film about an instantly lovable aggregation of Cuban crooners and virtuoso […]

T he FTC’s recent report on Hollywood’s violation of its own voluntary rating codes had politicians of both parties expressing indignation about how the entertainment industry targets children with violent and indecent material. Both Gore and Bush promised to increase pressure on industry executives; Gore even threatened regulation if the industry failed to “clean up […]